Comment by _sdfo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _sdfo | Hacker News Reader

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There's just no way I could keep myself up to date with local events without Facebook. I live in a post-soviet country so Snapchat and Instagram are considered pretty niche here so every social event is always documented on Facebook.

I also hold a monthly gamedev meetup, which would be utterly impossible without Facebook. The attendance has grown from 5 to 30 people in a few months and is now helping jump start the game development scene in the country (not because of my meetup).

Despite this, I have a deep hatred towards the platform and can't stand how people around me get locked into feedback loops of endless scrolling. I uninstalled the app on my phone a year ago, kept messenger. Also, I haven't seen the news feed in more than 2 years, after installing a plugin that blocks it. The productivity gains were and still are immeasurable.

I see the platform as a versatile and useful tool to help connect with others and I hope that Facebook will try to improve it and remove some of its ethically questionable features, but it's still evil.

It's a necessary evil.

It is evil but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me. And I never miss out on events. Even people I rarely interact with know how to, and do reach me outside of Facebook.

People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without Facebook but never actually try it. I honestly don't get it.

Same, however in my experience people like us will be left out of the loop when there are last minute changes to the event. Just last week I nearly missed a weekly public activity: the venue changed last minute and they only posted about that on Facebook. If a friend hadn't told me, I'd have gone to the usual place.

I have an amusing anecdote about being the one friend without Facebook.

Someone told me about a birthday party- they told me where it was and what time to be there. They did not tell me that our group was not actually invited and our arrival would be a surprise.

The rest of the group was half an hour late. I was not. They all wanted to arrive together and were delayed, but no one filled me in on the new time.

And that's the story about how I awkwardly attended a party for 30min where I knew no one but the birthday woman and it was obvious to everyone that I was not actually invited.

All was well once my friends arrived. Still, what a nightmare that was.

I haven't had Facebook in going on seven years. Not once has someone said anything like, "I only sent the invite out on Facebook. I forgot to invite you!"

As a counterpoint, I've made it clear to my friends I don't check facebook, and have missed out on events or only found out about them because they came up in passing conversation, specifically because they sent out a facebook invite and assumed it would reach me. Then when I mention I hadn't heard about it I always hear "Oh right, I forgot you don't check facebook". As the only person in my friend circle who doesn't use the platform, it seems almost unthinkable to the rest that someone would do that. Is it poor behavior on my friends' part? Perhaps, but it's not a hill I'm willing to die on.

I suspect the difference is that they still "see" you there. So my friends can't see me, even if they're looking for me and maybe that triggers a reminder in their minds that they need to call/text/whatever me.

The only way to be informed of public events relevant to my interests is via Facebook, sadly.

So either I can be there and find out about them, or I can hope someone I know notices them and notifies me.

Both are terrible options.

You may be interested in my side project, peapods.com. The beta will launch soon.

It definitely looks interesting.

One challenge I face, though, is that I'm unwilling to let my Facebook account break out of its silo by linking it to anything else (and of course I'd love to kill it entirely) so event discovery becomes more challenging without the private groups I'm currently a member of and family/friends information FB currently holds.

This looks really interesting. From what I gather, the intent is to encourage real physical interaction?

I think groups/meetups/business owners/musicians, et cetera have a very different use case than yourself.

> I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me.

That only works if they already know you. If you wanna start something new, it might benefit from having the outreach that facebook has.

I recently joined a gym and have met several people there I now call friends. They also all know I'm not on Facebook so these new friends text me (usually) when they want to get in touch outside of the gym.

Guys, you're proving what everybody is starting to realize; Facebook has become masters at making people addicted to them. Every excuse I see like this one is nothing more than justification for an addiction. I hear it all the time. Me: "I'm not on Facebook." Them: "Oh, I could never do that" and then the proceeds to outline some extenuating circumstance that they claim is unique to them which is in fact unique to NOBODY. Because Facebook is that good at making people addicted to it.

I challenge you to try it. Disable your account for six weeks and see how you feel. If you're miserable, fine. Go back. But at least try it!

I'm guessing you are not interests in local events.

I participate in local events all the time. And I find out about every single one outside of Facebook.

I hear you.

Really all I want is a solid app that's only Facebook's event system and friend lists and nothing else.

But I can't see any growth-motivated company ever making that and just stopping there. I'd even pay for it, if I thought they wouldn't try to make more money after that. Maybe it would have to be a non-profit.

Long time lingerer here.

My co-founder and I are building a groups and events system (like Meetup) that has a friends list and things like instant messaging. Our business model at the moment is freemium with ads and a limited organizer experience (you can create small groups/events) or we are offering a small subscription ~$5/mo. The subscription model removes the ads, unlocks all organizer features, and removes all limits on organizing groups/events such as being able to create a hierarchical organization with the tooling to manage it.

We are currently in YC Startup School as Geddy at geddy.io and we plan to launch soon.

Sounds great.

My main concern is that if you're in startup-crazy VC-funded world, you're eventually going to try to make more money, somehow, off my presence on your site -- through selling data or advertising or whatever.

If I do join it, I'll immediately leave when that happens. But if I think it might happen, I won't join it. The thing that would get me really interested would be a promise (ideally a legally restrictive one, like being a B-corp or a non-profit) that that won't happen.

I think that everyone (at least in my age group?) is slowly becoming enormously skeptical of companies offering services. I _want_ to use a service forever and have it be good and trustworthy. But in practice I feel like I'm getting tricked and manipulated at every turn, which is just slowly turning me into a luddite.

https://www.facebook.com/local/

I believe you still need a FB account.

Definitely not interested. I want something that provides a service for money and won't about-face to trying to milk me for growth, ad revenue, and commodified personal data.

(I promise, I am not shilling) Meetup (meetup.com) lets you make a group for I think $20/month (group participants can contribute to help the organizer) and is perfect for organizing events, sending calendar invites, providing a group forum and mailing list. I have been using it for about 10 years to keep up with local tech groups and it works great.

I love meetup and have found it extremely useful in a new city to try and meet people with similar hobbies. But I've also found there are basically two types. The people who are truly passionate about a hobby and are willing to take losses occasionally and the groups that are sponsored for an obvious reason. In Japan, where I discovered the site, there were lots of groups that just wanted to get native English speakers so they members didn't need to pay for English classes. In America most of the tech events are simply put on by companies who are looking to hire. Often times the events are still worth it and enjoyable, but it's definitely disappointing if you go to one and don't realize the underlying reason for the group existing. I've found the ones put on by the passionate people to be the most worthwhile and worth the more expensive dues.

I am worried those days are long gone. Just like there is no turning back for gaming. F2P elements in nearly everything including paid games!

> Just like there is no turning back for gaming. F2P elements in nearly everything including paid games!

There are plenty of paid games that do not include any kind of microtransaction. I'd consider the paid-games ecosystem to be surprisingly healthy these days. But to be fair, it's all console/PC. Mobile games are likely to remain a F2P wasteland.

I'm working on exactly this, stay tuned for the beta. peapods.com

Sounds neat. Any chance you could put something on your site about your, like, philosophy?

Facebook and similar make me wary of getting excited about anything which seems superficially good without first understanding the underlying intentions of the creators.

Meetup (meetup.com) works pretty well for event organizing. I have used it to keep up with local tech groups to attend their events.

I also only still use Facebook mainly for local events. I am building something you will probably find valuable, beta launching soon. peapods.com

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