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Comment by Fr0styMatt88 | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related -- and boy I never thought I'd say this! -- some stuff started changing in my life for the better recently and I decided to get back on Facebook and get involved again (I hadn't deleted my account or anything, I just hadn't posted or interacted in a very long time). I joined a bunch of groups that interested me and more importantly for me, I started making an effort to like and comment on posts of extended family that I rarely get to see in real life.

It's been REALLY positive. Just last night, we had a huge family thread going sharing our family pasta sauce recipes. It.... made me really happy! Now at the somewhat-annual extended family get-together, we'll have something in common to talk about.

I know it's definitely not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, but in letting go of my prejudices just a little, I've found a nice bit of additional joy in my life and hopefully made other people smile at the same time.

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I feel like your description of Facebook is what all the employees who worked on it circa 2004 were envisioning it would become. It seemed so groundbreaking yet so serene. A brand new way to do the same things.

I wish we could have all the good without the bad, but I suppose that's what makes this field so insanely hard.

I think the exact same thing too. I know I'm in a relative minority in being able to keep my Facebook privacy settings in check, for example. It's a really tough problem.

It's easy to have the good without the bad by unfollowing people and pages that post bad content.

It's just like most things in life: It's good if you consume the right amount.

...and ignore the externalities...

The platform has also changed. Now it is ad-infested and algorithmically crushed in the pursuit of profit to something which actually discourages these interactions.

Ie, if the algorithms fail to make you over-use it

Woah, that is a pretty compelling story to me. Makes me think about Facebooking a little.

One hint I can give you is that joining groups seemed to be the thing that really turned my news feed into something else. I've joined groups related to game programming, music production, Arduino and a bunch of others related to local music gigs (plus some support groups that I feel I can contribute to) and now there's actually a lot of interesting (and pleasantly technical) stuff in my feed. The other effect this had is that the ads I see are a lot better as well.

On a related note : That’s also how I use Twitter - carefully curated. I’m more of an occasional user, a lurker more than a tweeter. And the resulting recommendations, ads, and tweets are relevant and useful to me in the topics I like. It’s not perfect but it makes general discovery - breadth and depth - meaningful to me, whenever I go thru my feed.

If you mostly consume twitter I recommend trying tweet deck (which might be owned by twitter now?).

Its UI makes far more sense for consumption IMO.

What do you follow on Twitter? I’d like to use it more

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