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Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to see how many people make excuses for still using Facebook because it makes event organizing and the like easier. I'm 26 and never used Facebook. My friends organize group events all the time, I'm always kept in the loop because I text my friends and ask what they are doing this weekend and/or meet with my friends regularly enough that they let me know what's going on. It's become well known that I don't get updates through FB so my friends will text me invites if I haven't asked for an update.

People act as if Facebook is the only way to keep up with friends but it's just not the case. Every phone can still receive SMS and you can gasp meet your friends personally to catch up.

Now for friends who live in distant locations you need to ask yourself: Does Facebook status updates really make me feel more connected to this person? My answer would be no, and I accept the fact that I just wont see my friends who live in other locations as much as I'd like, and I simply try to make it a habit of catching up when I'm in town.

There was life before Facebook and there can be life without Facebook, stop making excuses.

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> It's interesting to see how many people make excuses for still using Facebook because it makes event organizing and the like easier. I'm 26 and never used Facebook.

If you've never used it, how do you know it does not make life easier? Similarly, it's possibly a burden (albeit small) on your friends who have to text you in addition to organising for others.

> Now for friends who live in distant locations you need to ask yourself: Does Facebook status updates really make me feel more connected to this person?

For you no, for me absolutely 100%.

Additionally, there are many opportunities I have discovered through Facebook that I likely would not have otherwise. For example, just last weekend I happened to be flying across continents and when I checked Facebook on my phone, I discovered a cousin I haven't seen in a while also happened to be flying to the same city on the same day. There would have been no reason to share this with each other, but because it was out there publicly I was able to see and organise time for us to meet. I often see content which prompts me to get in contact with people.

I have no doubt I can survive without Facebook (though perhaps some might not), so for me you're arguing a strawman. For me, there is no doubt that it _is useful_, the question is whether that offsets the myriad negative impacts. To suggest that your experience (with admission that you've never used Facebook) is reflective of everyone and they should "stop making excuses" is pretty narrow.

>Similarly, it's possibly a burden (albeit small) on your friends who have to text you in addition to organizing for others.

I really have to agree with this: using your friends as personal assistants is not cool. Planning events can be hard work, just scheduling your own weekend can be a hassle. That said: I do wish people used something other than Facebook to plan events. It's just not gonna happen anytime soon.

I know I'm an old fogey (like half a decade older than the parent commenter!), but I never really understand what people are talking about with this stuff. Throughout my 20s and to the present day, my weekend was not organized by checking for random events on Facebook, but by talking with my friends digitally or otherwise. How that is akin to "using your friends as personal assistants" is an absolute mystery to me. It sounds more like "using your friends as friends", which seems pretty normal...

If you’re talking to one friend, then that friend is essentially having to route your updates on time-constraints, preferences for places to go, etc. out to all your other friends, and route all their responses back to you. They really do become your secretary.

Now, it is possible to fan out these update messages yourself through (lots and lots of) SMSing, but in almost every friend group I’ve been in, the problem is that I don’t actually have contact information for everyone who I want to meet up with.

Basically: how do you negotiate restaurants with your best mate’s new vegan girlfriend? On Facebook, the two of you just have that conversation on the event page. Without Facebook, you have that conversation through your best mate—or maybe not at all, and then one or the other of you gets mad about where you end up eating.

Dear god, however did we survive before Facebook saved us all???

I know, Facebook is god, we can't socialize or plan things without it! /jk

It's not that you can't, but I won't invite you to many parties if I have to message you separately on everything. It's the common platform.

I have 2 friends that don't have Facebook, they get considerably fewer event invites, because it's such a hassle to plan with them.

When everyone was still of Facebook I also attended fewer events. It is something made easier by Facebook. The only redeeming feature if you will. But a significant one.

Honestly speaking... the idea of going to a party that nobody cares to specifically invite me to feels super weird. Are parties the only places where you socialise with people or something? Would you feel that you’re missing out on something if you only met in smaller groups for more ad-hoc things?

Coming uninvited is less the point. But it's easy to just invite 30-50 people. It doesn't make much of a difference for small ad-hoc events (which I usually plan through WhatsApp, which is still somewhat a social network).

> I have 2 friends that don't have Facebook, they get considerably fewer event invites, because it's such a hassle to plan with them.

Maybe what they need isn’t more parties, but different friends. That’s not a judgement on you — I don’t know you nor your friends, so if you think the hassle of inviting them does not outweigh the pleasure of their company, that’s your decision to make.

But maybe they don’t care. Maybe to them not being invited to a few (or even the majority of) events is worth it, considering the alternative. If you’ve asked them and got an answer, I’d be interested to know what it was.

>Maybe what they need isn’t more parties, but different friends. That’s not a judgement on you — I don’t know you nor your friends, so if you think the hassle of inviting them does not outweigh the pleasure of their company, that’s your decision to make.

If everybody takes about 10 minutes of individual communication overhead for a party and you have 50 guests. then that's 500 minutes of communication of what might just be a simple 10 minute organization over Facebook. If some exceptions aren't on Facebook it's maybe less of an issue, but it still is a disrespect for other people's time.

>But maybe they don’t care. Maybe to them not being invited to a few (or even the majority of) events is worth it, considering the alternative. If you’ve asked them and got an answer, I’d be interested to know what it was.

I asked them, they both cited privacy concerns as their main reasons to quit Facebook (which is completely valid).

> I asked them, they both cited privacy concerns as their main reasons to quit Facebook

The question is not “why did you leave Facebook”, but “is not being invited to a majority of events worth it to you”.

If they're your friends, why don't you have their cell #? This isn't rocket science, throw everyone in a MMS group or Signal group and boom, you can easily coordinate two dozen people to get together sometime on Saturday.

Facebook went in the rubbish along with High School for me, its been years since I last logged in. I doubt that cesspool will see me anytime soon.

Did you read the example? The point is coordinating (and negotiating) with friends-of-friends, when your friends expect to bring said friends-of-friends, without requiring your friends act as a proxy.

> MMS group or Signal group

I don’t see these as fundamentally different from a Facebook event; the point, in my mind, was to compare the class of digital ephemeral forums from the coordination strategies possible when you don’t have any such digital ephemeral forum available.

However, Facebook events have the advantage over MMSes, at least, of people who join/are invited into the event being able to see the history of the conversation so far.

Ok, I see where you're coming from, but none of this is how anything works for me. I just say, "hey let's do something!" and my friends either say, "ok, whatcha want to do?" or "ok, I'm doing X, you want to do that with me?" or "shoot I can't, I'm already doing Y". Then I say either, "well I'd love to Z" or "sure I'll join you for X" or "darn! lunch this week?". Sometimes yeah, people don't want to go to the same restaurant or whatever, but it just gets figured out through communication. It doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm sure this would all work just as well on Facebook, but it works just as well off Facebook too.

> . I just say, "hey let's do something!"

That scales ... Poorly.

> Sometimes yeah, people don't want to go to the same restaurant or whatever, but it just gets figured out through communication.

Sure, solving these problems through communication is fun. Especially with 5+ people involved. Or god forbid 20+.

I wonder how many events these "i dont use facebook its worthless" people organize. And with what frequency.

Even the crappy timeline feature has benefits - I went to awesome concert last week with a friend that I had not met in a while. Only because I saw him interested in it on the timeline.

Facebook sucks, but you people have no idea what its positives are, and therefore you will not ever be able to make any real alternative ... That sucks even more, because I would really like platform with better UI than FB.

> That scales ... Poorly.

Maybe the OP doesn’t want it to scale. Maybe they’re not interested in frequent events with 20+ people. Maybe they prefer going to events with an established group of friends.

Crucially, the OP made a specific point (emphasis mine):

> none of this is how anything works for me.

It’s not like Facebook removes the hassle of organising 20 people. It just makes it less of a hassle. If you don’t typically go to events with that many people, then Facebook solves no problem. Maybe you feel Facebook is necessary for your group of friends, but it’s definitely not necessary for every group.

> you people have no idea what its positives are

I’ve used Facebook. I’m well aware what its positives are. For me they don’t outweigh the negatives, so I deleted my account. Maybe “we people” are not interested in “making a real alternative to Facebook”. Maybe for us the better alternative already exists and it’s called “no Facebook”.

> Maybe the OP doesn’t want it to scale.

Frankly, in topic about "#deletefacebook" that seems like moving goalposts. Plenty of people enjoy those events of 5-10 people, so why so much hate on facebook.

> Maybe they prefer going to events with an established group of friends.

I don't understand, you claim that you can't have established group of friends with count over 20?

> It’s not like Facebook removes the hassle of organising 20 people. It just makes it less of a hassle.

That is funny. Organizing event for 20 people actually IS easy with Facebook, only hassle are those "I don't want to have a Facebook account" people that can't be just copied from previous event like everyone else.

> Maybe “we people” are not interested in “making a real alternative to Facebook”. Maybe for us the better alternative already exists and it’s called “no Facebook”.

True, sorry for the strawman. It sometimes seems to me like some people are posturing about their superiority due to not using FB, and it gets on my nerves.

My point (made more explicitly a couple comments upthread) is just that my life is not organized around "events" like you're describing. So yeah, it doesn't "scale", but that's not the point. I'm also not suggesting that Facebook is "worthless", what I'm pushing back on is the idea some people seem to have that this "someone has to organize an event" way of socializing is the only way. My way is a different way that works well for me (and I think lots of other people), and I'm certain there are lots of other ways, some of which benefit greatly from Facebook, and some of which don't.

> you will not ever be able to make any real alternative

This seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. I'm not sure who suggested they want to make an alternative. Certainly not the person you replied to, because that's me, and I don't want to do that :)

> what I'm pushing back on is the idea some people seem to have that this "someone has to organize an event" way of socializing is the only way.

And I am pushing back on idea that organizing events can be done equally without FB. When you say:

> I'm certain there are lots of other ways, some of which benefit greatly from Facebook, and some of which don't.

then we are basically in agreement.

We're taking around each other. You're saying "you need Facebook to organize events" and I'm saying "you don't need to organize events to socialize". It's two different conversations.

The number one thing is that you have to be reciprocal. As mentioned in a different comment I recently moved across the country to a new city where I did not know anyone. I would meet people at random events, connect with them, and then invite them and whoever else they wanted to bring along to different events I heard about when looking for things online. I was very aggressive in telling my friends about different events via text and organizing that way. I did this with 3-4 well connected people and then they started texting me about interesting things they found that I could go to and invite friends of my own. Once this was established both me and my friend(s) would text each other and ask about plans for the weekend.

If you're planning something large I understand that something like Facebook is required. But if you're just trying to get a few friends together I don't see why you can't do it via text.

> I really have to agree with this: using your friends as personal assistants is not cool.

From personal experience I can say: asking your friends to sign up with some questionable service, when you don't care about privacy but maybe they do... and forcing them to make a choice of either giving up on their privacy or being excluded from social activities... that's totally not cool either.

> Additionally, there are many opportunities I have discovered through Facebook that I likely would not have otherwise. For example, just last weekend I happened to be flying across continents and when I checked Facebook on my phone, I discovered a cousin I haven't seen in a while also happened to be flying to the same city on the same day. There would have been no reason to share this with each other, but because it was out there publicly I was able to see and organise time for us to meet. I often see content which prompts me to get in contact with people.

I can understand this point but I think you would agree that this is really a case of serendipity and is not reflective of the "average" interaction between two people are connected via social media but do not meet regularly face to face.

I went to high school on the east coast but now live on the west coast. I had instagram for a few years but stopped in late 2017 because the algorithm changes annoyed me. Most of the people in my feed where either friends from high school who I don't connect with regularly (and if I do it would be during the holidays) or local friends who I meet w/ every couple of weeks at the least. The level of 'connectedness' between me and my high school friends on the east coast stayed relatively the same (very low) once I stopped using instagram. I mean it was funny to see memes and interesting to look at what vacations they were taking but there was very minimal interaction then and there is minimal interaction now.

> If you've never used it, how do you know it does not make life easier?

I've used Facebook and then quit. Facebook doesn't make life easier. It's a huge time waster, in addition to being dangerous for society. My social life improved a lot since leaving. I did have some interesting meetings with people through Facebook, but the overall effect was detrimental to my life. I've seen many people there whose lives are being damaged by the site due to addiction. They want to quit but can't, because Facebook has locked their social connections within the site.

I unfollowed all my friends(you can also use an extension that removes your feed), now I have the pros of Facebook which is being connected to people I care about while not having to fight a feed-looking/time-wasting addiction.

I only use facebook for messenger and events now and it works quite well.

You could add the one thing I do: post links and comments warning everyone on FB how bad it is. It's the people who live on FB who most need to get these messages.

When people recommend that I quite Facebook I feel a little bit like I would if they recommended that I stop eating cookies. Sure - if I were to remove cookies completely from my diet there might be a marginal health benefit, as long as I didn't just replace them with something else. But really I don't eat cookies all that often anyway, it would be a pretty small change to my life. And when I do eat cookies I kind of enjoy it - sure I've had a bad one now and then but overall the experience is positive. Eating cookies isn't a big enough part of my life that I would really miss them in any meaningful way, but it's also not a big enough part of my life to feel like making an effort to cut them out would be at all worthwhile.

But hey if it works for you it should work for literally everyone else, right?

> I'm 26 and never used Facebook.

I'm 31 and I've never used tobacco. If people who used tobacco just made better choices they could be like me. They really need to ask themselves if tobacco really makes them happier. /s

---

I suppose it's a bit facile to compare Facebook to an addictive drug, but the idea that just because you've never used Facebook, nobody else should want to doesn't make any sense. Not everybody's circumstances and background are going to look like yours and people will have different needs. My friends probably have a very different dynamic than your friends so what works for you might not work for me or vice-versa.

If you're 31, you've had facebook for what 11 years of your life at most? How'd you survive the other 20.

Needs, that's comical. Facebook is not a need.

I could obviously live without a Facebook account. My social life is just better with it than without it. Your circumstances might be different. The point is that everybody's circumstances are different so just because you don't derive value from a particular product or service doesn't mean that other people don't.

If you're going to be super-literal about the word "need" then we can include pretty much nothing other than water, food, and shelter as "needs." But we wouldn't have a very useful conversation if we did that.

A lot of the Facebook deletion advice comes down to: "I'm hypercompetent at managing my social life and am constantly invited to important events by direct contact, and barely remember what it would not be like to be that way, therefore I don't see a significant downside to immediate cessation of all FB use."

Well I think the fact of the matter is if you want to get rid of Facebook and / or social media while maintaining a social like you MUST become hyper competent at managing your social life.

I moved across the country and had to rebuild my social network from scratch without social media, you can do this through sites like meetup or checking local event calender's.

Once you meet some folks who you want to know better you can exchange numbers and quickly set up a coffee, tea, lunch, dinner thing and then get into the habit on checking up with them to see what they are doing. Once I established this relationship with people they began to invite me to things every once in a while, do this with 3-5 well connected friends and you should have options every weekend.

People are outsourcing the management of their social life through Facebook, if you want to stop using Facebook you really need to take back control of managing your social network.

I don't advocate Facebook deletion (or the opposite: people can do whatever they want as far as I'm concerned), I just constantly forget to use it. So your comment doesn't ring true to me: I'm not anywhere near socially "hyper competent", my life just isn't organized around being invited to "important events". I just go to work, go home, and ping my friends from time to time or respond to their pings if I want to hang out. It isn't clear to me where Facebook would be a critical tool in any of this.

I am a musician and we HAVE TO follow the trends to get shows. Used to be a bunch of tools, (I.E. myspace/reverb nation/bookyourownfuckinglife...) but now facebook seems to have dominated DIY events and concerts. Groups help with people to share shows and I'm not really aware of another tool that the majority of people will use to get shows booked in my community.

Even if another tool exists how would I sway people away from FB and to a new tool?

I like going to see small bands, and it's easiest to find them using Facebook.

I "follow" two local promoters and a couple of venues, with the setting to show their events at the top of my timeline.

Friends share events they're going to, and Facebook's algorithm shares them too.

I used to use Last.FM, but stopped checking it once everything seemed to be on Facebook anyway. I still use it if I'm travelling to another city.

I used to get a printed flyer from the promoter when I went to a gig, but they have mostly stopped printing them.

I'd prefer not to have to check 10 promoter/venue websites, magazines or whatever. They probably don't have RSS, and are usually less-complete than Facebook.

ditto here...musician and you basically have to be on facebook. Fans don't check every band & venue website calendars. It would have be great if average folk figured out RSS.

>using Facebook because it makes event organizing and the like easier...I'm always kept in the loop because I text my friends and ask what they are doing this weekend and/or meet with my friends regularly enough that they let me know what's going on. It's become well known that I don't get updates through FB so my friends will text me invites if I haven't asked for an update.

In other words, you're demonstrating an exception that proves the rule. Organizing events (without Facebook) is not a linear problem, it's a problem where each subcomponent scales directly with the number of people involved. Maybe not O(n^2), but at least O(n*log(n)). Every change to the planning of the event has to be spread to and approved by every attendee, requiring independent contact of each. Facebook centralises this by providing a central organization system that it is as close to guaranteed as possible that everyone has access to. This brings it back close to being a linear endeavor.

Just because you claim you aren't benefiting from Facebook's competency in this area doesn't mean you aren't. You said it yourself: your friends know you are the outlier in this planning, so they can can remember to contact you separately without adding additional time complexity. They can handle all the other nuances of planning directly on Facebook and you gain the benefits without having to interact with it.

I think this is... fine? Are we concerned about our friends not using Facebook or are we concerned about you yourself not using Facebook. I don't see a problem with letting your friends organize things on Facebook and getting pulled into the loop by a member of the group.

Thing is, when facebook isn't the primary platform this doesn't have to be an O(n^2) problem. Throwing everyone in a group, whether it be on Hangouts or Signal isn't terribly hard, nor is sending out an email invite if you'd prefer that vector.

> I simply try to make it a habit of catching up when I'm in town

Yes, but how do you do that? My long-distance friends are constantly moving address and changing phone numbers. Facebook (or an IM app, if they happen to still use the same one they used to) is the only way I know to figure out how to find my friends when I get back in town after a year or two away.

most of my contacts didn't change their email address in last ten years so you could always reach them through email if you don't have their whatsapp

This is true for organizing small events with friends but unfortunately for larger events like local concerts and such it gets hard to keep track of all the shows happening as someone active in the local music scene.

Not to mention how difficult it is to put on shows without facebook promotion.

Unfortunately Facebook is practically only platform where all the shows I care about are organized on.

That being said, I've recently got off and now I depend on friends who stay on Facebook or word of mouth which has worked out, but I don't put on shows.

Unfortunately Facebook has it's place.. for now

> Every phone can still receive SMS and you can gasp meet your friends personally to catch up.

Sure, if you friends live next door. If they live on different continent, a bit harder to do. SMS is also pretty inefficient. I mean if one of your friends' daughter won a prize in school contest and you want to congratulate the happy father, that really can't happen over SMS. Unless the father is going to spam everybody in the contact list with the news, and get a wave of spam back. That'd be horrible.

> It's become well known that I don't get updates through FB so my friends will text me invites if I haven't asked for an update.

You friends accommodate you and make extra effort to adjust for you. Good for them. But that doesn't mean it is the best way to do things. Maybe Facebook isn't either, but this way doesn't seem to be any better than Facebook. In fact, it's worse.

> Now for friends who live in distant locations you need to ask yourself: Does Facebook status updates really make me feel more connected to this person? My answer would be no

My answer would be absolutely yes.

> There was life before Facebook and there can be life without Facebook, stop making excuses.

Why I need any excuses? Facebook is an instrument. Just as any other. No excuses are needed to use an instrument, and nobody owes anybody any explanations or excuses when they use tools they like. You prefer to use different tools? Good for you. Doesn't make any difference to people that have different preferences.

The problem Facebook papers over is something that could and perhaps now should be fixed by open protocol.

The people most attached to Facebook —the people who will never give it up until it's clear it's dead— are those who want to conveniently share what they're doing with real life friends and family, as well as see what they're doing. They want a social network that everybody uses.

I think it's easy for us to forget that when we're yammering on about the problems with Facebook. The way we fix that isn't bitching about Facebook; trying to get them to be a better Facebook, or having silly dreams about writing a competitor. We don't need another Facebook, we need a better technical expression of a social network.

Something so fundamentally different that allows it to be decentralised from the gaping maws of companies like Facebook, simple enough for grandma, and built into everything; as prevalent as SMS and email.

We're not there yet. Given the powers that control these things are also the people making and selling the devices, I'm not sure we'll ever be there... But that's the problem to solve.

It's not about making excuses, it's about Facebook being the best tool. You could say that with anything, of course I could live without a car, without a cell phone, but they make the life better an easier.

When I invite Family & Friends to my kids birthday party, if I were to do it without Facebook i'd have to have the phone or email of every single one of the people. I don't, it's difficult to keep a contact list updated with every phone or email address. I try to do it but Facebook does it better. It's much easier to not forget people. The suggestions are great. It's also an easy way to RSVP, something a phone would make very difficult to handle.

Also yes Facebook makes me feel much more connected to people. Most of my family is global, my parents live in France, I have quite a lot of friends in France. Same for Canada, and also spread out across states in the US. I only see my sisters, parents, about only once a year. I would be terribly sad if we didn't post updates via Facebook. Yes we call each other via Skype, but it doesn't allow to share the activities we have done.

The only way I would ditch Facebook, is if there is a better tool that does the same things.

> It's interesting to see how many people make excuses for still using Facebook because it makes event organizing and the like easier.

One of my favourite tweets, from Mike Monteiro:

https://twitter.com/monteiro/status/321048448889663488

> I’ve heard excuses from people who want to quit Facebook but can’t that would make heroin addicts blush.

You need to accept that Facebook adds value for some people. Maybe it doesn't add value for you, but that's no justification for extrapolating your personal experience to everyone else and assuming they are making excuses.

Momentum. I'm part of an organization that uses FB to communicate things to members. Yeah, I could try and get them to change. It's not worth my time. I just go to FB when I need to do business with the group.

Not everyone has good friends like that.

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