I don't have a FB account and have lost interest in Techcrunch. | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a FB account and have lost interest in Techcrunch.

15 pointsmarkkat13 comments

I'm curious as to whether I am alone in this. I was traveling when TC made the switch from using Disqus to Facebook comments.

There's no chance that I'll get a FB account just to comment on blogs. But, I've found that I am not visiting TC as much as I used to. I'd love to share my thoughts on TC about this, but can't. :)

Am I in the minority here? I'd hate to see this trend continue, as I don't want to use one account for all my internet interactions.

View on HN

I've looked at TC comments on a handful of recent articles and didn't find any profanity/trolling/etc. Maybe I just got lucky, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't like that before. That's definitely a plus.

That definitely is an upside. However, although the trolling an profanity may have been reduced, it's possible that people don't express controversial opinions they might have, as they are now linked to their facebook network.

-That's part of the reason I don't have a FB account, I don't really want to have conversations with an audience that includes my aunt, my friends, and my coworkers. That just doesn't interest me. For example, there are many opinions and ideas I could quickly share with my childhood friend, that I could only share with my aunt with the inclusion of considerable context, so that I wouldn't be misunderstood. As a result, my conversations would probably by shallow and trivial, so as not to waste time, but then be ultimately uninteresting.

I used MySpace some time ago, but dropped it for similar reasons.

I do have a FB account, but even I have stopped frequenting Techcrunch since they made the switch. For some reason, I just don't want to comment using my FB account. And no, I'm not a comment troll.

With 600+ Million users, its safe to say you're a minority on this one. Sorry.

600 million users can't be wrong? Do you really want every comment you make on every blog ever to be permanently attached to your name ... and searchable by employers, wives, girlfriends, family, the police ...

Ah ... its like that bit in Hitchhikers where they have the cow that slaughters itself.

It's not really focal to the discussion at hand, but yes, I would like for everything everybody says in a public forum attached to them.

I'm an AVID defender of free speech, and have run a number of 'safe haven' forums in the past which naturally drew a number of trolls. I don't have a problem with trolling, even when it gets sadistic, personal and crosses every line that it can -- most people do.

The general cure for that is the lack of anonymity. It won't happen to the roguish young in many cases, but for many people, knowing that it CAN be tracked back to them eventually is enough to keep the really bad attacks out of play.

What about gays, atheists and others who could possibly damage far more than their own reputation?

I live in a country where I have absolutely no problem admitting to anyone that I don't believe in any gods, but it seems that in America this can and often has ripped families apart. Should those people be excluded from any public discourse regarding their beliefs?

The price which has to be paid in this dystopian future of yours is far too high, especially when the "trolls" you are trying to vanquish could just as easily be moderated out of existence wherever they became a problem.

How many other parts of our lives should we be forced to expose in order to take part in a community? HIV status? Voting history? Race? Whatever you feel the limit should be, I feel that peoples real names, races and locations is far more than anyone should ever have to share.

On a more mundane note, what about losing a job at Apple e because a search for your name brought up a few very negative, but non-trollish, comments you made about the iPhone, or perhaps Apple as a company.

These examples are generalised and unlikely... But not outside the realm of possibility.

I suspect that you read too much into my wish. I wasn't actually sayingn that we get rid of anonymous free speech -- honestly, because I know that isn't the answer, and there are times (admittely, that I cannot relate to) where people may have fear of persecution for their beliefs.

Also, I'm not looking to eliminate the trolls in the world -- forced anonymity wouldn't CURE it, but would almost certainly lessen its presence considerably. However, having seen first hand how entirely unnecessarily negative attacks can destroy a community.

You bring up an interesting point though, in that speech can be 'moderated into existence' -- which in my opinion, is even more oppressive than public identifiability. You would institute censorship to restore anonymity? I consider that the worst of the two ideas.

I think the best solution is to allow everyone to keep their anonymity if they want, and just repeat the mantra: "Don't Feed The Trolls!"

Where necessary, implement some form of community moderation, much like here, unpopular comments are greyed out, on other sites, like Reddit, they are hidden until requested.

Forced anonymity will forever be a pipe-dream anyway I think.

Well, as I alluded to, I'm not sanctioning forced identity disclosure everywhere, but I do believe that if a site owner wants to keep their site from being a cesspool without resorting to censorship, it's a better compromise to me than moderation.

It's a tricky subject, I agree, and it's clear we lie on different sides of what we consider to be acceptable, but ultimately, it's quite hard to have a community drive site the doesn't devolve -- HN, Reddit, Digg, and every other online community is a testament to that.

The fact that it's technically non-trivial to identify a person absolutely makes it harder to keep trolls away, as they're always free to get a new IP address and re-register as another username, which makes it harder to enforce standards in the community.

You're probably right, but even so, I have the feeling that there are quite a few people that use FB because they feel obligated to do so.

I'm pretty sure with 600+ million users, he's in the majority. Heck, he's in the majority of people on the Internet that don't have a Facebook account.

I have a facebook account, I had to make it to do development for a former employer. I rarely login, and given a choice I'd much rather use my Twitter or Github login. If facebook is my only option, I just don't login.

My time is much better spent face-to-face in the real world that the time-suck that is facebook.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com