Facebook – You are the Product
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If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.
There is no difference between a call or text and a message on FB, the medium doesn't change the context.
And if you do it right (meaning using the right app), your messages can be fully end-to-end encrypted so that no one can read them but the intended recipients.
EDIT: it is widely known that the NSA has direct lines into places like Google and Facebook so using Facebook Messenger still routes your messages through the NSA indirectly. The only logical course of action, if someone cares about that sort of thing, is to not use Facebook Messenger and limit the amount of eyes that can see your communications.
Maybe it's because it personally takes me more effort to make a phone call, or the added tone of voice, or maybe it's just the instant dialogue that the call creates. Calls will always be more special to me than a facebook message. Just as a handwritten birthday letter in the mail is more special than the same message in a text.
Phone calls are typically person-to-person communication where you can hear the tone of voice of the person you are talking to, so you can better read their meaning. Also, you typically call people you already know well enough to disturb. It's a very personal form of communication.
Facebook is different in all those areas. You are thrown into meaningless conversations with people you don't know where you can't hear anyone's one of voice. Some parts of facebook seem to be designed specifically to encourage more conversation instead of meaningful conversation - things like how you really have to dig to read earlier comments in a thread. They just want you to keep posting instead of following the actual discussion in a coherent way.
Likewise, posting on this site is different than having a conversation in person. You can't tell that I'm writing all this in a friendly tone. Instead, it might come across as an angry argument when I don't mean it that way. That's a disadvantage of this medium and a way in which it changes communication.
Today, being the first day of school here in Colorado, my wife told me that the parents decided to organize a Facebook group to share information. My suggestion was a Whatsapp group, but I guess that's Facebook as well :).
Music events that i go to are exclusively promoted on facebook. How do you recommend i find out about these events so that i can get a cheaper ticket price?
if anyone wants to organize a plan that has more than 8 people, facebook groups make it much much easier.
I personally hate facebook's mobile apps and some it's policies ( Internet.org comes 1st to my mind), but it's hard to completely stop using it.
>I personally hate facebook's mobile apps and some it's policies ( Internet.org comes 1st to my mind), but it's hard to completely stop using it.
Try it! Deactivate your account for a week. Do it again later for two weeks. Maybe for a month. When you learn how to live without it, delete it.
No matter what I do, several activities and groups I want to be a part of are only advertised and organized on facebook. It's not within my power to change that.
And that, in fact, _does_ makes it hard to avoid using facebook without being left out.
I think you might mean _fear_ of being left out...friends will find other ways to contact you.
Further email doesn't force you to participate in any particular service at all because it is a federated service.
Assuming that someone should get a facebook to talk to you is like assuming someone should switch to sprint to call you.
Imagine how moronic the world would be if all the different phone networks were disconnected from one another.
I agree it is suboptimal, and whether or not it is worth the tradeoff is an individual decision, but that is the world we live in.
The group level is where most of the rubber meets the road here.
Answering email is really a pretty normal expectation.
If you ask for their email and they offer to friend you, and you decline, should they assume you don't want to be in the loop for things?
Your arguments for email as a platform equally apply to facebook. Yeah email is decentralized and oldsr, but that stuff doesn't matter to regular people who want the easiest tool for the job.
If they're hard to reach it's because they chose to, not because you're using the wrong comm channel :)
Generally back when I used facebook the cloests friends I had had 0 interaction on facebook and we usually just direct message through messenger or imessage.
Fscebook at that time was just for maintaining those “outlier” relationships until I realized its better to have closer bonds with fewer people.
Also a group that "just decides" outliers are not worth the hassle, are not friends. They seriously are not. Friend groups are pretty much defined as the sort of groups that do not do this. Except in cases of grave social misconduct, often destroying the "group" or "friend" aspect in the process.
They are a group, yes. And indeed, some groups will sometimes just decide to ostracise outliers if it conflicts with the group identity. Nothing inherently wrong with that, btw, this can be very useful for certain types of group. As long as it doesn't become the main type of group you identify with. Because then, as we see from all the people making excuses all over this thread, not adhering to certain rules of the group-identity becomes an existential fear of epic proportions, because it touches upon a very fundamental behavioural aspect of our biology--fear of being cast out of the tribe (which used to mean suffering followed by near-certain death).
Facebook is currently exploiting this behavioural trigger (together with an addictive cocktail of other triggers) in a quarter of the world's population.
>No, we didn't, because 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook.
My friends will actively invite me (I don't use facebook) to events if they want me there.
Sure, [good|strong|old|pick your adjective] friends will contact you regardless of your facebook involvement.
But there are plenty of acquaintances, groups, events and whatnot that only get organized or contacted on facebook.
And even so, why would you put the extra burden on your friends to contact you in a special way? Why wouldn't you make it easy for them to contact you?
If I live on a mountain, 1,000 miles from everyone, people--even my friends--don't invite me to their parties because they don't think I'm available. I have isolated myself, and people take social cues from that. People also take clues from social isolation.
I'm reminded of when I set my mother up for email. She really didn't think she needed it or would want it, "Getting a stamp just isn't that hard." But the fact of the matter is that the lower friction method of communication enabled her to be in contact with many, many more people. Facebook is even lower friction than that.
"Those aren't your friends" ignores too many realities of life.
Texting is just as easy as facebook messaging. Or they can use discord, slack, etc etc. facebook isn't the only way to contact someone that is easy.
> But there are plenty of acquaintances, groups, events and whatnot that only get organized or contacted on facebook.
Maybe this is because I grew an introvert, but I can deal with being by myself as well as most of my friends. Going to events, etc isn't a must have. It's something that you can do if you want too. If I want to go hang out, then I will contact people. I will make it easy for them to say yes/no/no response. But I don't have to be apart of every group meeting, or every little discussion.
Trade that off if you like, not not everyone does.
Facebook vs having acquaintances?
It's like smoking in the 80s, with the ostracism turned up to 11.
The good news being, what seemed impossible then, we slowly seem to be winning the tide against smoking. Speaking as a (currently..) ex-smoker. If you remember we used to be allowed to smoke in restaurants (I can hardly believe it myself, sometimes), how the consensus felt back then, there is hope :)
Anyone who can't move their finger an inch to click on a different ubiquitous app to contact you isn't your friend regardless of what you think.
And thanks for the incredible insight into who is my friend and who isn't. Your ability to judge from several paragraphs of my writing and nothing more is pretty impressive.
The things I missed weren't really, my friends exactly, but rather broad groups with common interests.
If one doesn't hang out where everyone else does, you can't expect people to invite you when they look at each other and say, "Let's go somewhere."
Sending an email really does imply moving your finger an inch to use a different app.
Read it again. He's not actually saying that.
Buddy I'm pretty sure it is your inability to judge just how many of your friends would still take the effort to reach out to you if you were to quit being a FB user, given any of the good reasons to do so.
Just like you might fear they won't be your friends or you won't be having a good time if you don't drink with them. That fear is most probably not real. And if it does turn out to be true, in the case if alcohol you probably dodged a bullet. And in the case of FB use ... well it's your call.
It's not even addictive.
This is like saying you taught your mother to enjoy mint-flavoured soda water ("a glass of water is just as good for thirst") ... as a way to defend having to drink alcohol to feel accepted by your friends.
Oh and in a lot of cases, the fear is not even real, you just believe you need FB. Your friends might just surprise you yet.
The part where you get left out is when someone from your squad sees a cool event and decides to go. They're going regardless of who else is going, but it would be nice to have some friends there.
So they post in the squad group chat "Hey I'm going to this event, anyone in?" aaaaand that's about it as far as organization goes. If you're in you're in, if you're not, that's fine too.
Not every event warrants personally inviting everyone you'd like to see there. Personally inviting people is for small primarily gatherings, not for more casual larger stuff.
casual isn't friendship. My friends and I, hang out because we enjoy each others company and like to do things together. Not to invite people because we are lonely.
Plus, I don't mind being "left out" or "missing something". As I get older, it's just not worth the hassle
Why not? People are busy. They have jobs and partners and pets and sometimes kids. All of that takes time and attention.
These days I talk less to my closest friends than I did to my farthest acquaintances in high school or even college. It's kinda sad but that's just how it is. And trying to get together face-to-face? LoL, it can take months to align our schedules.
And when it comes to larger stuff. Sometimes you just wanna organize a birthday party or something for everyone, you know? If I want to invite you to a party like that, are we not friends?
Acquaintances or good acquaintances.
I think this boils down to each person's definition of friends and friendship along with the amount of social interaction each person needs.
I need very little social interaction, so I tend to keep close friends and not much else. I know others who always like to be around someone. They don't care much who it is, and they generally have looser terms for friendship.
Also, face-to-face isn't required. Hop on discord or skype, or just send them a text message. If they are a close friend and you enjoy their company, you should try to keep the lines of communication open.
So I'm throwing a party with just acquaintances and no friends are coming? That feels weird.
> I need very little social interaction
Me too. Which is why I tend to keep to myself, and throw a huge rager for as many people as I can get to show up a couple times per year.
Maybe I don't really have any close friends anymore, the definition gets muddy when most everyone you used to consider a close friend is now a 12 hour flight away and you never really get to see them anymore.
But my point is that when I'm organizing a party, I want everyone. Acquaintances and close friends alike. It feels weird that just because I'm organizing a larger event, that should automatically make everyone I invite a not-friend. Usually I'd like a mix.
Sorry, I took the inverted view of this. If you are inviting me, most likely I am an acquaintance.
I don't throw parties, but I do like to hang out, so generally I just invite friends over. Just friends. When I do throw a party, it's mostly for someone else and so is definitely mostly acquaintances.
> Maybe I don't really have any close friends anymore, the definition gets muddy when most everyone you used to consider a close friend is now a 12 hour flight away and you never really get to see them anymore.
Don't take this the wrong way, but this is depressing. Some of my good friends I have actually never seen in real life. Distance doesn't mean you can't be friends. But I do make a point to talk with them once a week (we game together) unless someone is gone on a vacation or something like that. I remember a time when I didn't have any real friends and it put me adrift. I would highly recommend that you try and give them a call, or shoot them a text.
I know, I too have some close friends that I only saw in person many years after we became friends. We do have an IRC channel for a lot of these friends, but the 9 hour time difference seems to really throw a wrench into things.
Especially now that people have gotten lives. They close the computer after work (which is when I start waking up) and go do stuff with their partners. When they're online and chattering away, is most often when I'm asleep.
So yeah distance doesn't matter at all in my experience, but timezone difference matters a lot.
That said, these are not friends I would invite to a huge party anyway because they're too far to make it. We hang out when we're on the same continent.
> So I'm throwing a party with just acquaintances and no friends are coming? That feels weird.
> But my point is that when I'm organizing a party, I want everyone. Acquaintances and close friends alike. It feels weird that just because I'm organizing a larger event, that should automatically make everyone I invite a not-friend.
I'm really confused now, do you invite your friends that are not FB users, or not?
Or do you claim that you have zero friends that are not FB users?
Do you require all your friends to be on FB? What about the ones who quit, do they just drop off your radar or something?
Don't let that stop you from telling others how to socialize correctly!
Shouldn't we encourage others to have deeper, more meaningful relationships?
Well, at least now you have your FB to collectively like and share away your sorrows. I'm sure you feel less sad while you're on it.
> If I want to invite you to a party like that, are we not friends?
If you do not invite me to this party just because I don't use FB? What do you think yourself? Would you call yourself my friend?
I mean if you forget, ok. But if you keep forgetting, yes that is how friendships wither and die. This is a natural thing. If it feels like a painful idea to lose someone's friendship that way, watering it is really one of the easiest things to do. If instead it feels like it is a hard thing to do, then ask yourself and consider what you really fear losing? (probably something other than friendship--not necessarily bad)
You can of course use FB to connect with friends. But, like alcohol, you cannot justify lack of FB to justify not connecting with your friends.
And the buck doesn't stop at FB or its developers, now you are forcing other people start using, too.
Um, so? He still wanted to go that party.
... like there aren't any communication alternatives that don't take days, just as speedy and convenient, but less addictive.
Maybe sometimes I want to go see acquintances though, not just people who are already good friends and will remember to invite me via my preferred way of communication?
It takes a very particular size of group for that to happen. If you hang out with 4-5 people you would know if you "forgot" to invite someone. If it's much more than that, that is really a lot of people who it didn't occur to whether they wanted to see Kyle there or not.
But you should really ask Kyle, about feeling left out and the quality of his friendships.
> 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook
Except that is not why you are on FB while trying to defend your behaviour towards Kyle, that's only the story an alcoholic tells to himself when he's meeting his friends at the corner pub.
If FB usage was just a "party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing", we would not be having this discussion.
Let alone a "very useful" one, which would obviously allow to invite people transparently and easily via multiple channels of communication. FB does the exact opposite of this[0]. Now listen to yourself defending this!! Is that really your true opinion of this "organising app" speaking, or is it your dopamine-addiction, group identity and fear of ostracism?
[0] Try using FB links sent through other comm for a bit with a logged out, cookies cleared browser. Like, a day or two.
It is. You have the power to choose what you want to be a part of. And these groups have more members than yourself - people who you can ask to help you stay up to date on meetings and such.
Yes, I could ask someone to forward me the notices, and activities, but how do you propose I participate in the discussions of what to do?
When the voting via facebook poll happens, how do you propose I make my voice heard.
Now, you could argue that facebook isn't worth it. (And that is a perfectly reasonable position to take.) But that is a different position than, "It's easy to make these things work without facebook."
Yes, we could "write someone a letter in the mail instead" or "ask a friend about the events on facebook" but that would defeat the point for the vast majority of us that aren't interested in spending hours managing our social contacts and calendars. You're not really giving solutions when you suggest things like that.
I don't spend hours managing my social contacts and calendars and I still feel connected with my family and my friends without Facebook.
I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.
Although I hate, hate, hate certain parts of it, there is absolutely zero doubt that it has been beneficial on balance.
I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store.
"It is legal to hunt. There's nothing stopping you from going into the woods, killing a deer, and salting its meat other than your own dependency on the conveniences of the modern era."
I mean, at some point, we have to accept that the world is becoming a lot easier to live in.
I'm curious what era you grew up in - were you around when literally the only way to get a hold of someone was hope they're home for a phone call? It sucked. I genuinely believe people that disagree are wearing rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. Back then, my only friends could be the ones that went to my highschool, or lived in my neighborhood. In a city like Houston, that's quite the restriction - my sister can have friends from all over the city, as far as Pasadena or even Sugarland! Impossible when I was a kid.
Well, a grocery store isn't really harmful in the way Facebook is. Grocery stores aren't tracking you in every other store you go to and selling that information to the highest bidder, they aren't tracking when you're asleep and awake and everything you use on your phone and they aren't designed to keep you addicted and in the store for as many of your waking hours as possible. You could point out that they might do things like put sugary foods in prominent places but you can always exercise self control and go to the healthier choice - but there's no equivalent Facebook "lite:. Even if grocery stores were all of these things it'd be a lot more reasonable to suggest the farmer's market before hunting. Facebook is demonstrably harmful, grocery stores are not.
>I'm curious what era you grew up in - were you around when literally the only way to get a hold of someone was hope they're home for a phone call? It sucked.
I'm 25 years old, and I definitely lived through and remember a lot of time when the internet was not ubiquitous and calling your friends up was the best way to reach them (I remember the rise of texting, too). It really wasn't bad at all.
>Back then, my only friends could be the ones that went to my highschool, or lived in my neighborhood. In a city like Houston, that's quite the restriction - my sister can have friends from all over the city, as far as Pasadena or even Sugarland! Impossible when I was a kid.
I don't use Facebook today and I still have friends around the world. Hell, in two weeks I'm flying out to Tokyo and crashing on a friend's couch for two weeks and seeing a concert - and we managed to arrange that without Facebook.
Also, I keep seeing the, "Facebook isn't worth the tradeoff" argument coming up. That may be true, but again, that is a different claim than, "It is easy to live without it."
re: Your note below that you are suggesting others give it a try:
I did that for years. I counted on getting invites via text message or email. I organized things myself without it. I really did give it a go. I still missed out on way more than I wanted to.
I finally joined facebook about six months ago. I'm very careful about what I share, both with other facebook users and the company itself.
I hate many things about facebook. But what I can't deny is that I am much more connected with many more people than I was before. There is no comparison.
... Except it didn't go like that at all, a zillion other options came along, pagers, mobile phones + texting, email, a whole bunch of instant messaging networks, all of which worked increasingly well for the problems your FB use is supposedly uniquely solving, yet none of was addictive like FB use, a machine learning algorithm targeting flaws in the human psyche / attention-mechanism / dopamine-treadmill to keep them "engaged" and instilling the fear of ostracism if they ever dare to leave.
You can defend convenient channels of communication, but you can't defend the package FB wraps it in.
Sir_Cmpwn said,
> I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.
Scarily so.
In addition, unlike supermarkets, FB use is actually addictive, it is very much designed to be that way. This is not a point of discussion any more.
For instance, your era with the nostalgia glasses, sure it sucked (depending where you lived I guess). But FB use was not the thing that changed it. That was mobile phones, and if you lived in that era you know this very well. That's a couple of decades of technology you're skipping over to justify your FB use.
Get real: people waste a lot more time on 'tech' than they save, compared to doing without. The goal of most of those 'techs' is to take up as much of your time as possible, that's the foundation of their business.
It's not a clear net positive just because of those conveniences, and there are no current "solutions" to give as everything you list is far more relevant to network effects than technical feature set. (e.g. in the past, using Facebook made you an outlier, why not just use email lists/myspace/phone calls/etc like everyone else?) A path to an alternative would be through Facebook collapsing (unlikely on their own), another social media site out-marketing Facebook, or establishing your own small networking effect under different assumptions.
Volunteer to help with those alternative means.
Those are real tradeoffs that many groups aren't willing to accept, regardless of how willing a single person is to shoulder the burden.
Ask everyone to sign up for different methods of communication
And the fact is that most people prefer it.
I've refused to be blackmailed into Facebook use by my family, so there's zero chance a friend or associate will get away with it. If people can't be arsed to email me about something they consider significant, I don't have time for them either.
FOMO is a condition that happens in your head, as is how you let your peers treat you. It is within your power to deal with it.
[1] I don't discount that informal bonding, chit-chat, etc.; it is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, group formation, etc. I prefer the in-person sort, and for virtual, there's a whole internet out there that is not FB.
If you're interested in being a diligent contributor to your social group, you're either stuck trying to evangelize some other tool (usually less convenient for everyone else who doesn't mind facebook) or you're stuck asking for someone to check the FB event for you.
You can't really disconnect and easily maintain a social life in this circumstance.
Some people use it for their whole social calendar. This is different from the old evite.com days, which was more email list based.
I'm not on it so Facebook, but my Partner is so she keeps me posted on the social aspect of whats going on. If she wasn't I probably would have to be. Not being on it means stuff happens and I won't know. I'm ok with that, but it can be a bit isolating. There is only so much you can expect acquaintances to work to keep you in the loop.
People like that its free (not like the services you pay for like meetup.com)
And yeah, you can text, you can call, but "if" everyone is on facebook, it's a lot easier. I still have friends texting, but esp. for bigger group events, Fb is "just there" for most people. It's useful to be a part of that.
I don't like it, I don't like their views on destroying privacy or discouraging pseudonyms, and I wish there was something that was better at Facebook than Facebook, but there isn't.
In the past 3 months I am down an Instagram account and LinkedIn. Snapchat is probably next due to the absolutely awful interface and general pointlessness.
This doesn't work because the world has changed since Facebook didn't exist. Now that it does, some forms of social interaction that existed outside of FB now only exist on FB.
I have friends with whom FB is the only form of communication with them, and many more friends with whom FB is easily the primary form. You can't singlehandedly convince all of your friends to move off FB and onto a better platform. Especially since most of these friendships are kinda small.
I've often seen the argument "well if they aren't meaningful friendships, it doesn't matter" but that's just not practical. Sometimes you'll reconnect with someone who you haven't spoken with in 5 years - that's occasionally how friendships work. Friendships aren't permanent and steady in intensity: they sometimes fade in and out. Quitting FB obliterates all those transient and potential future friendships.
We can reduce you saying "When you learn how to live without it" to you saying "When you learn how to live without interacting with a decent chunk of people that you know". Does it seem so easy now?
First off, you're doing a terrible thing to yourself by framing it as if you have only two choices: Become FB's product or become ostracised from your social circle. The latter is a deeply-ingrained biological fear, back in our tribal hunter/gather days, this basically meant death. Advertising has been abusing this biological behavioural function since the early 80's[0] but Facebook is going to extremes by actually invading and parasitising off our current social fabric, rather than just promising a "cool" lifestyle on top, like branding does.
In addition, by letting your friends do this, you are normalising the idea of "FB as only form of communication" for everybody else, too! There's so many people out there who would love to stop using FB that won't because they, like you, deeply fear being ostracised. More than you think (you won't find them on FB). If you feel that, just maybe, a single mega-corporation shouldn't be able to do this to more than 25% of all people in the whole wide world[1], then just maybe it's worth it to take a tiny bit of a stance and have a firm talk with your friends about this abuse, no?
Then there's people that I've seen (on here) crying, "you seem to have it easy, apparently your friends+family will accept this and you have time to find other means of communication but I live far away from home and have no time, and I would be so incredibly lonely if I'd stop doing FB". If you really, really feel that way, here's a big, fat yell-out-loud piece of advice: YOU ARE ALREADY LONELY. BEING A FB USER JUST OBSCURES THIS FACT. START TAKING ACTION TO FIX THIS IN A HEALTHY WAY. You're a user, and your social network consists of users (even if many of them seem to do fine). Ask any ex-addict what that's worth.
Finally, some of my friends have gone through hard times. Money, mental health, bad times. Sometimes they drop off the radar. Damage or lose their phone, disconnect from the social networks because of anxiety, shame or worries. These are the people that need their (real) social networks the most. I (and some of my friends with me) always make a point of SMS texting them about social stuff, keeping them in the loop, hangouts going on, once I realise they no longer read a certain group-chat. Even if they don't reply 4 out of 5 times, you will find they are super-grateful the fifth time. If you love them, keep an eye out for them. And even if you don't know anyone in this kind of situation, somebody you know probably does, so for their sake, start normalising the idea of keeping people in the loop whether they are on FB or not! (same goes for other networks/means of communication, but FB is extra bad because of its ubiquity and it's actively exploiting our human behaviour in a manner that is harmful to many individuals--while to groups appearing fine).
> I've often seen the argument "well if they aren't meaningful friendships, it doesn't matter" but that's just not practical. Sometimes you'll reconnect with someone who you haven't spoken with in 5 years - that's occasionally how friendships work. Friendships aren't permanent and steady in intensity: they sometimes fade in and out. Quitting FB obliterates all those transient and potential future friendships.
Except for pointing out the fact that last line is false and this fade in/out of friendships really does happen whether you're on FB or not, I'm just going to repeat: Ask any ex-addict. There's a lot of subtle nuances and facets to this fear of losing touch with certain people or potential future social contacts if you'd really really stop being a user. Be sure to ask one instead of assuming you know what they'll tell you. If you think you don't know any ex-addicts, try asking about alcohol.
> We can reduce you saying "When you learn how to live without it" to you saying "When you learn how to live without interacting with a decent chunk of people that you know".
But are you really. How can you even say you're interacting with a decent chunk of people that you know if that interaction is forcefully mediated through a singular channel of communication and you openly admit you're unable to really connect with them otherwise.
> Does it seem so easy now?
Face it, what seems hard is actually interacting with these people more, in a way that does not involve using FB together. It's that corporate-manufactured addictiveness talking. Just like the trying-to-quit alcoholic, finding it hard to expand their interaction with their friends to include things that do not involve consuming alcohol, getting pulled back in again every time.
And if you're that far in, you have my compassion. Because that is hard. It starts with facing the facts and not making excuses, it is your social responsibility.
On the bright side, working to expand your interaction with those you care about outside FB, is wholesome and fun. Chances are you might even reconnect with someone you haven't spoken in 5 years.
[0] Naomi Klein, No Logo. With the rise of "branding", advertising shifted from "this is our product" and "it's better because it has Y" towards associating the product with a lifestyle, a social group often entirely unrelated to the product (Coca-Cola being the classic example, having gone through many lifestyle-guises, none of which having to do with consuming carbonated sugary chemical sludge).
[1] 26.1% at time of posting, https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(facebook+users)/(worl...
To recap, I have a bunch of friendships that are so minor that I only have contact with them on FB. They're not serious enough to demand the other person to move off FB. (We're talking about "I randomly like one of there posts every few months" minor.) They may become more serious in the future due to the ephemeral nature of friendships. Leaving FB would sever those friendships before they get to that stage.
Hopefully that makes sense!
I get what you're saying regarding the utility of facebook, but it's really not missed much once you leave.
FWIW - mbasic.fb.com does not work. But mbasic.facebook.com does.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-mobile-f...
Then I added the few ones I truly wanted to know about to the "Close friends" list which allows you to activate notifications for everything they post.
Now when I log in I only see a bunch of notifications which have a very handy "Mark all as read" link, and I only click further when I see a non-meme status update or an interesting share from them.
I can always search someone and go to their profile, or click on a firend list and see what certain group is up to. And I still find messenger useful, except for the forced "Add to your day" part, from which I daily hide any friends "day" as they post it without opening it (hold click to show that option). I'm about 1 year like this and it has been great, don't feel like I'm missing anything.
Viola, I am free of facebook and don't use it though I still have an account and have never deactivated it. Maybe it will not work for you.
P.S HN seems to be a bigger problem than FB for me atleast. Can't stop reading all posts and comments everyday.
As much as privacy is a legitimate concern, it's also a modern form of angst. So the existentialist mode that says "oh, you either have chicken and wait to die or have the beef and wait to die", which is demodé, gets replaced by "you either have chicken and get massacred by the social media-advertising-mass scale espionage nexus, or..."
(Angst isn't necessarily a bad thing either, but you should know...)
You throw a party and get to talk to everyone. I mean come on, we used to socialize before social networks.
What worked for me:
1. Delete facebook app from phone (hiding it didnt work) 2. Install Newsfeed eradicator chrome extension
Result: still maintaining communication with friends via messenger app and checking facebook only once in a while for events etc. News Feed was the attention grabber.
Helped me to get back attention and time. Would recommend.
So, there is this thing which a little old: emails. It is wonderful to organize things. For group chats you also have some old shit like IRC. You get your beloved hashtag too.
It’s ok to use that part since it’s basically a commodity feature that can be swapped if it becomes bad. That being said, they do read your messenger chats.
"It's too far away", "I don't trust them with my credit card", "I don't like exercising in front of people", "I need to be careful of my back", "I don't have time after work and I can't show up sweaty".
Ultimately, they just don't want to go to the gym. Nothing on that list is hard to solve, if you decide to go to the gym. If you don't have any drive to go to the gym, it's an unscalable and infinite wall of problems.
I can give you solution to the problems you've listed. In my experience, people will use other messenger solutions if you just ask them. Facebook users are a demographic that care nothing for installing another app on their phones. Pick one, and ask people to use it. Try wickr. There are dozens of online event organizers that can replace facebook's event RSVP, although I generally just talk to people like a human being.
If the music events you enjoy are promoted /only/ on facebook, then they're relatively niche affairs. Get involved with them. Hell, offer to be their "promotes in places that aren't facebook" guy in exchange for free tickets. Be a community builder.
But these ideas won't be acceptable to you, and even if they were you'd have a thousand other objections up your sleeve, because ultimately you don't actually want to leave facebook. I'm not going to try to frog-march you out the door, but lets not pretend there are actually any meaningful barriers there.
Before Facebook I created and/or used e-mail aliases, e-mail groups, forums, file hosting services, etc. to share our story with friends and family. Facebook makes it much simpler.
I don't use it extensively. I don't play games on it. I don't even connect to it every day. And I would stop using it if I had a good alternative.
Printing pictures is only a few bucks, and as a side effect the recipient can easily frame it and put it on their hearth!
You can put just as much time and thought into an email as you can a letter. Technology is not the issue here, merely etiquette.
A typed letter is not more personal than e-mail, I'm afraid.
I just checked with USPS. It costs _a dollar_ to mail a letter from Philly to Madagascar.
>A typed letter is not more personal than e-mail, I'm afraid.
Comparing it to an email is clever, because it helps your point seem more valid. But this is about Facebook, so I'm going to compare it to that - though many of these points are valid when comparing against email as well.
Facebook is a constant barrage of snippets from constant mini mind dumps of everything each person is thinking, mixed with ads and distracting videos all carefully served by an algorithm that uses machine learning to steal your attention for as long as possible and addict you to the service.
A letter, typed or not, is going to be read in the real world, probably sitting down somewhere comfortable without any ads or distractions. It will be written more thoughtfully because it is an infrequent occurance. It may have been mailed with photos or a small trinket that made you think of them. How would you react if you received a thoughtful letter from your sister instead of of a hundred thoughtless shouts into the void? I certainly hope you would be touched, and I feel bad for your sister if you wouldn't.
All you're doing in this thread is deflect, deflect, deflect. I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish. I am fully convinced that you are a Facebook addict in denial.
Same with Facebook (for any other media type, for that matter). I put my filters on, and I don't get distracted by the adds.
Also, on Facebook, I'm arguably pushing more information than I'm pulling. So my consumption and communication is somewhat limited to the notifications that I get. So I already have a filter when I connect: I look at my notifications. I don't browse Facebook aimlessly. My time is precious ;).
There are reasons why snail mail is not so popular anymore. It's not because we are technology junkies, but mainly because snail mail is inefficient and much less interactive. Why don't we play chess by mail, or play a an RPG game by mail? Certainly some people still do but we have much better ways of doing it now.
I like "writing" and I have a decent handwriting. But, to me, writing letters for everything I want to share with my friends and family looks like overkill to say the least.
I'm not happy that Facebook is the most efficient way for me to communicate with friends and family living abroad, but until there is a better alternative, I'm afraid I'm stuck with it.
Only exception is my grandma and a good friend who refuses to be on FB (he lives in Australia). I use phone and video to catch up with them :).
This is certainly your right, but I am not. Someone said "denial"? :)
I rarely get religious and passionate about things. I don't have FB shares. I'm simply pragmatic. It serves its purpose. Nothing more.
That's even less useful than the time I spent on Facebook this evening :-)
Drew, I think I understand where you're coming from. But as stated earlier on, I don't even connect to Facebook daily, let alone spending hours on it.
I think you're being too romantic about the good old snail mail. ;)
I login probably once a week at most, and only check messenger if someone pings me on it. It's not difficult, so why are so many people advocating deleting accounts to improve their lives?
Having said that, I totally get that one may not necessarily want to know what a friend had for lunch, for example :).
I have no way of knowing who wants to see any individual pictures. My parents want to see nearly all. What about my second cousin who I haven't seen in person in 15 years because she lives so far away? What about the running back of our high school football team? I'm not close enough that I'd send any pictures to either of them, but in fact they like that once in a while they see pictures of my kids and remember I exist.
Facebook solves a real social problem that text, and phones do not solve. (There are other solutions, but Facebook is the popular one)
What made Facebook useful for me is when I blocked all games. I'm slowly eliminating political posts as well, but since I'm active in politics some of my real friends are also active which makes this impossible.
With all due respect, until FB nominally solved this problem, you (I) never even knew this problem existed. Before it became trivial to share pictures with a long lost acquaintance using FB, we got by just fine showing pics to a tiny subset of friends.
There was literally no idea in anyone's head that they needed to show pictures of their children to some guy they last spoke to 15 years ago. This notion that FB is solving a real need is false. It's like saying cigarette companies solve the problem of nicotine cravings among smokers.
commute times are probably the same (45 minutes walking/tram with a 4~5 mi dense city core, vs 45 in the freeway and a 60 miles of low suburban development) and we don't have the infrastructure for alternatives to travel outside the city.
As to the need for speed itself. I used to like big fancy fast cars.
Then I got a motorcycle. Now cars are... boring.
Also to Facebook's facial recognition software, without your kids ever agreeing to it and they won't have a way to undo it once they grow up, even if they want to.
I've tried to express the same idea to friends and family who pester me about not being on FB, but I never came up with a phrase as simple and succinct as "mental pollution." Thanks!
Texting and calling is mostly a 1 to 1 relationship. Which is good to wish happy birthday or such. But it sucks to actually update people about news, post pictures.
Now I could potentially open a blog, but then again a lot of the people checking my Facebook profile aren't really that into tech. I have my 97 years old grandfather that checks Facebook because we taught him how to. If I tell him to go this blog to check my news, to another blog to check my sisters news, etc... It will become very difficult.
I think Facebook is a great platform, but over the years it filled up with too many ads. They are attempting too much to maximize profit, which is a crappy goal. If I would control Facebook, I would reduce the ads to a minimum survivable. And then I would offer a premium option with no ads.
You can get a lot more accomplished by not spending time on Facebook. But for many people, vicarious living and social media validation are some of the few things that bring them joy in their lives.
I think that social media already gives you opportunities to do things when you login with your social media account. I think in the future (and probably already happening) you get discounts for sharing your social media data and that higher classes (or wealthier people) can afford to not share that information which is why they will not use it. I do not think it will get to the point like it did in 15 million merits (see Black Mirror episode) but something along those lines, specifically money allows you to save time and 'purchase' privacy by not having to use these things that require your privacy in order to use because you can afford not to.
note: I deleted my facebook in 2008. I lost touch with a number of people, but the time I saved has been immeasurable.
Edit: minor grammar
I am on last.fm tho ;) but not with my real name.
I have a common name, and have been passed over for job opportunities because someone else in my city with my same name at one point had a facebook account full of obscenities.
That usually gets the recruiters out of my hair.
First, for privacy concerns. FB, specially was getting to creepy for me. I felt, every action I did was being analyzed and filtered, I felt like I was a lab rat. The fact that these companies know so much about us is pretty scary, I felt like I needed to regain my privacy, fight the system somehow.
Second reason was because, I wasn't getting anything substantial that could improve my life overall. All I saw was dumb-ass posts, ignorant comments, the passive aggressiveness, the "look at me doing this really mundane thing, but please like my picture so I can feel validated", etc... feels like a mouse-cat race to see which of us has a better life or something. I honestly feel bad for how much time I spent there when I could apply that time to learn new things.
After more than 6 months without FB, here's what I've learned:
- I still keep in touch with my closest friends, we chat on slack/iMessage every day. It's actually a good way to know who really misses you, during this time, only about 5% of my FB friends reached out to me through message or phone to ask how were things in life. The other 95%, I really don't even remember most of their names anymore. Just ask yourselves, why do we have to share so much of our lives with so many "friends"? I know we can filter, and create groups, etc.. but damn...do you really want to spend your life "managing" relationships, to see who sees what? I find that tiresome.
- I don't feel left out of anything, because I keep track of local events using other sources, I read news from faithful websites, and if I need to share anything I just use the old email or show face-to-face any pictures I need of my latest vacation from my phone without having to share anything with anyone.
- I gain more time, less stress, I don't feel overwhelmed to keep track of every social media update. I just don't care. If something important happens I will know it sooner or later.
- I no longer have this need to constantly keep posting photos of what I'm doing outdoors or whatever. I don't have the need to feel validated by anyone but myself.
- But most importantly, I regained my privacy, or at least my social footprint is bare none at this point. I'm using uBlock, Firefox, DuckDuckGo and other tools to keep trackers at bay.
I may never completely win this war, but at least my habits aren't being recorded and feed to any ML algorithm.
Metafilter user blue_beetle first put this idea online when he said "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold" in response to the Digg revolt of 2010. The idea apparently existed for a few decades prior regarding TV advertising. I prefer to think blue_beetle was the one who brought it into the zeitgeist.
http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/
Edit: Alex3917 posted a similar idea on HN on 6 May 2010, beating blue_beetle by a couple months. Gotta give credit where it's due: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15030959
To be honest, this isn't even just about Facebook, I'm sure you could have the same argument about the majority of today's tech companies who are commoditizing information about users and using that to monetize.
Generally, though, this is a trend that is not slowing down, instead it's rapidly speeding up. In addition to that, the methods have become increasingly worse. I'd like to continue discourse on methods of combating this particular phenomenon.
That, plus there's sure to be a young whipper-snapper on HN that will read the article and think, "what a neat idea that nobody has ever thought of..."
Arguably it doesn't even matter () because it's more profitable to run advertising along with donations/micropayments to diversify revenue streams. This also doesn't solve the issue of views as currency and the optimizations it drags along.
As for combating this - there are no golden bullets. Even Google's search starts to lean towards sources that a given user visits more oft... or actually my search patterns fit to a given scheme that's abused by media outlets in their SEO.
I've had an idea for aggregating time-ordered news headlines for analysis to get a broad comparison of author and company leanings. This could be then shaped to a browser extension informing the user about that. The problem is that then it would be accused of labeling stuff with broad strokes.
(This mainly comes from me not remembering which news site likes which politicians and social issues.)
So I would say the notion goes back at least to Chomsky and Herman.
Edit: Maybe it needs to be clarified that I'm in agreement with Olympus's comment and trying to expand on it.
"A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325103
I only posted it because one of my friends told me about hearing a speaker bringing up the idea at a conference, but it's an idea that's been around for decades.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325103 > 2659 days ago
Facebook creates a product which is a social media network. You PAY for that product with your data and your eyeballs. Facebook takes your payment, turns around, and sells it to advertisers and others interested in the data.
That is not the same as saying you are the product.
The exact same argument can be made for supermarkets: they are conduits for putting you in front of goods from suppliers (supermarkets invest a lot more in their relationship with powerful suppliers than they do with individual customers!) - your desire to buy food and go home and make dinner is entirely orthogonal to the supermarket, their interests aren't aligned with yours! Yet, despite this, in more than half a century of supermarkets being wildly popular, serving billions of people, the number of times when the supermarket failed to satisfy the customers actual desire is a rounding error next to the times they did.
Adam Smith saw and understood this 250 years ago: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
And so it is with Facebook. If it does not fundamentally provide some value that you care about, you will stop using it, and in that important aspect their interests are aligned with yours.
This isn't quite true, where addiction / compulsive usage can be implicated. Still, it's true that FB isn't completely in the pocket of advertisers and such. To the extent that they do make transgressions against their users, they will tend to not be overt.
FB doesn't have to make its users happy (whatever that means) so much as not piss them off.
Do you really think most of Facebook's users have any idea of the value of what they're handing over, or of how it's being used, or of the potential for abuse?
> And so it is with Facebook. If it does not fundamentally provide some value that you care about, you will stop using it, and in that important aspect their interests are aligned with yours.
Yes in the same sense that a heroin dealer's interests are aligned with the addict's.
An extreme difference in the situation is that what is being sold by the supermarket is a physical commodity, and in the Facebook case, what is being sold is highly personalized data, the understanding of which could be used to affect the Facebook user far into the future.
Buying lettuce from a store does not bind you as tightly to the store.
What is the same in both cases, is that the larger, more organized entity with more money is being catered to, and the needs of the mass of consumers is being given less weight.
That seems like a natural outcome of how the incentives are set up - the corporations have more at stake, and have more veto power per organization. Therefore, they are going to bargain harder, at a higher level.
One way that you cannot compare the two ("If it does not fundamentally provide some value ..."), is that I can go to any supermarket to get curry ingredients. I may only be able to go to see what a particular person has to say, for example my mom, or the hot person I just met.
A great example. Thank you.
"Value" is a low bar. Do you have thoughts on Facebook's moral responsibilities to their actual users particularly given the sophisticated psychology experiments it's known to run? Is reduction to engagement and economic value appropriate for what is the social platform monopoly?
I have every confidence that the psychological manipulation used today will be found to be unethical in the decades ahead as we gain understanding of the brain and establish science that supports morality.
I guess what I am saying is, sure their interests may align with ours, but are our interested aligned with us to begin with? If our interests leads to self destructive tendencies, is that still ok?
"Benefit" is a fraught word. History is littered with those campaigning against presumed vices. I can't find the quote right now, but I'm pretty sure Dr Kellogg, the cornflakes guy, had some things to say about young women reading fiction that IIRC wasn't all that different from what critics have to say about Facebook today.
Whatever is wrong with Facebook is analogues to what's wrong with any number of vices, from sugar to alcohol to weed (and Facebook is probably in the very light end of that spectrum). They all benefit users, but also potentially do harm. The solution isn't moral zealously, it's being responsible, being aware of not letting it get to you and helping a friend before they get in too deep.
Right, of course.
But I believe the point here is you are, in terms of the sum of your data and your attention, the product facebook sells
You don't explicitly and consciously pay with your data and attention in exchange for a social networking service, you are tricked into a "free" service that you implicitly pay with your data and attention.
Facebook knows who pays the bills, and they kowtow to those people.
The system is entirely set up to sell users to advertisers. Content is merely there to allow them harvest users. That's how the whole chain operates.
Advertisers don't care about the data, they care about converting you into a customer. Data happens to be the medium in which the exchange happens. Just like I don't buy a whole convenience store - I buy a soda from a convenience store - I am buying customers from Facebook's social media network. So, yes, it's appropriate to say "YOU are the product".
In 1973, the artist Richard Serra made a film called Television Delivers People which declares "You are the product of TV" [0]
Key to Noam Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_ (1988) is the idea that advertising-supported media caters to the desires of the advertiser, not the media consumer [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Delivers_People [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
The advertising tools are so powerful it is downright scary, the level of targeting one can do using it is just insane.
That's partly the reason why I stopped posting updates. After seeing the depth of the advertising tools.
I don't use Facebook for posting personal updates anymore but only to fuel my business. I realise that the only way I can "choose" to stay out of all these services that track and sell our identity to advertisers is if I have "fuck you money" (money is the currency you exchange for your limited time in order to survive in this world).
Does this not scream hypocrisy to you?
However, HN downvotes do seem to be trending toward "I disagree" recently too, in my experience.
By all means, if you can't use a website without becoming addicted to it, disconnect.
But there's no need to damn everyone else with the "that's exactly what an addict would say" kafkatrap rhetoric that seems to be so popular every time the topic comes up.
I use FB to keep in touch with family and friends, and as a way for them to invite me to events. I avoid the "news" feed like the plague, and strongly prefer Imgur's User Submitted for a feed of "what's going on in the world today".
Fb is not just making us another node in a vast network graph but also ensuring a worst boring grown-ups who can't do anything worthy but post an Fb post condemning something and feeling great about their social responsibility.
Any service online, where you do not explicitly pay money for goods/services rendered, you can rest assured that you are paying with data or influence (advertisement).
HN is no different. They control the news, and how the news is displayed. They run the YCombinator venture capital fund. You do not pay them, but they control influence (advertising). I would expect different if I paid YC for news access... But I dont.
Problem is that social networks are hard to build, and tech people behind efforts like Diaspora, while they may understand the tech part, can't make something appealing enough for grandma or everage joe.
This is a questionable assertion. Giant tech companies like Oracle and IBM don't tend to expand in this way, they make acquisitions of smaller companies, and use them to enhance the platform capabilities of the larger product.
I'm sure Zuck will be delighted if the "bottom billion" do all sign up and use Facebook, but they're never going to be massively profitable accounts.
Imo the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp show the way that Facebook will go - Instagram adds a new and lucrative ad format, a profitable user segment and a base for adding in ideas from other platforms, such as Snapchat. WhatsApp builds out Facebook's graph and can be mined for intel.
It might help you understand why it is "free". You be the judge of if that is good or bad.
It would be a right move for them probably, going mobile first like WeChat did in China, still it is probably the only "messaging only" platform which people around me use.
http://computerfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/facebook...
I just felt frustrated that so much people discarded the arguments years ago only to read it everywhere now.
Does that messenger account work for "sign in with facebook" buttons? For example, the only way to authenticate with Tinder is a Facebook account.
Sweet!
Edit: Some references for the people who downvoted:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397308000701 (also talks about how FB is a good help for people with low self-esteem)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-sociologie-2017-1-p-57.htm (French)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-sociologie-2017-1-p-83.htm (French, talks about how people in their 40s use FB - spoiler: to keep in touch with close friends and family)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2014.01.002
http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/05/21/teens-social-media-and-privacy/Then I realized that I keep in touch with the people who I want to keep in touch using direct messages, phone calls, email, etc.
In my experience most people idly browse through the news feed for a couple minutes a few times a day. I doubt that a large portion are actually addicted to it.
Social media, used by some only to keep in contact is okay, but the subconscious comparison of your real life to others social media life, can be really harmful.
Do you happen to have some papers on that subject? I’ve seen papers on how people present themselves on FB; not on how they "judge" others’ feeds.
Communication isn't a problem, but communication mediated by a predatory middleman and augmented with addictive mechanics absolutely is.