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Comment by sweden | Hacker News Reader

Why do people go to extremes about Facebook? Every single submission I see here on HN, and most of the comments as well, are either about using and abusing Facebook for every single aspect of their lifes or about eradicating it from the face of the Earth.

Is this part of the American culture? I'm from Europe and while there is a lot of people sharing every single thing on Facebook here, I would say that most of the people never really post or follow stuff on Facebook. People don't really care that much about the social showoff. Most of people use Facebook because it is really convenient for contacting other people and organizing events, and that's it.

Can't you just use Facebook when you find it convenient and then just move on with your life?

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The problem is that most people conflate social media with the predominant mode of social media use, i.e., smartphones. Many of the jedi mind tricks that the mobile apps play to keep us addicted don't really work that well on a computer.

For example, here is a TED Talk by a very smart person on "Why you should quit social media": https://www.ted.com/talks/cal_newport_why_you_should_quit_so... but listen to his arguments and you see that most of his objections are to the mode of social media use in the present day, i.e., smartphones.

In my opinion people should not quit social media, rather they should quit using smartphones and find out what their friends are up to on a weekly/monthly basis by logging in to their facebook account on a computer. This is a healthy way to use social media.

Let me not get into the obvious rebuttal "but, how do I quit smartphones! they're so useful!". Personally, I use a Nokia 105 and I am very happy.

A common recurrence I see here when people say how their life improved after quitting fb, is that people seem to have been addicted to it.

I like fb. Messenger is useful because almost everyone I know uses it. Seeing events of venues and making them directly, getting updates from the host is very convenient. I like getting into political discussions.

But I've never felt the need to look at the horrible FB wall all the time. I never felt compelled to go to FB all the time.

I also went through the settings and set my privacy settings as I wanted them, long before any of the FB scares happened.

I think Facebook is a tool and if you become addicted, then yes, you should probably quit. But otherwise, use it in a way that helps you.

How did you get rid of the wall? From my experience with FB apps and desktop experience they always feed you back into the wall. I haven't found an effective way of blocking it yet. FWIW on the phone I uninstalled the FB app ages ago and only use the Messenger app.

I didn't get rid of it, I simply ignore it most of the time unless I'm really bored. And same for me, only messenger on my phone.

I believe that has a lot to do with how the experiences are actually different. Advertising are a lot more agressive, significantly more present and rely on data gathered from brokers that are meaningfully more insightful. Just look at the TV ad culture: ads for drugs that are incredibly manipulative, political ads that somehow are worst — and add targeting. The ads I see Americans friends share are terrifying to me.

Show-offs are also probably a problem, too; more so that there are less social expectation to peg them down a notch in the US.

I absolutely you can make Facebook work for you, but that requires to give it negative feedback (blocking or hiding people, hiding ads) and people have a strong aversion to this, on both sides of the Atlantic -- including data scientists who should know better about training models with balanced feedback.

>Can't you just use Facebook when you find it convenient and then just move on with your life?

I do. I check FB a couple times a month, but I have to remember to log out lest they help give power over my actual life to another piece of trash like Trump again. That is the problem with Facebook, and it's a problem they consider to be the family jewels.

This isn't anti-vax nuttiness. While individual people might get value out of FB and communicate with people they wouldn't otherwise and all the other benefits FB provides to the recluse/housebound/gossip demographic that provides value to FB's marketing team (never referring to the demo as such, natch), FB is provably a cancer on society. If you want to say Trump is a special exception, I'm willing to hear how FB no longer is a factor in issues this serious, but I doubt that the rationale exists.

> Why do people go to extremes about Facebook? Every single submission I see here on HN

Are you a paid anti-GDPR propagandist? You are somewhat convincing. You almost made me back out of deleting my account but instead I went through with it just now.

> Most of people use Facebook because it is really convenient for contacting other people and organizing events, and that's it.

Well also at the expense off FB mining every little interaction and tidbit of you. Sure Google is doing the same. But might as well control what you can.

> Are you a paid anti-GDPR propagandist?

That breaks the site rule against insinuating astroturfing or shillage without evidence. Please don't do that on HN—it's one of the most toxic tropes around.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Are you a paid anti-GDPR propagandist? You are somewhat convincing.

I remember this line of argument from the 90s.

Guy: "Actually, Windows is not that bad, and enterprises love its administration features...."

Hivemind: "MICRO$OFT SHILL! BURN THE HERETIC!"

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