When Facebook got my Mom fuming with anger | Hacker News Reader

When Facebook got my Mom fuming with anger

o2h2.com

12 pointszaidf20 comments

I still maintain that Facebook is, by design, anti-social.

Society is a balance between private and public activity (another HNer talked about warrens and commons).

When that balance is ignored, then the result is antisocial whether it over-promotes privacy or publicity.

Most people are not wanton socialites, but Facebook only caters those who are... the rest of us are just (taken) along for the ride.

This is the exact reason I shut my account and have not looked back since. I actually find my life a lot more social since as well, people now email, text, skype and phone me a lot more, and it's not all on public display.

Anyone that says it's down to your friends to correctly set privacy levels is nuts, that clearly doesn't enter 90% of peoples minds.

I have lots of friends overseas/inter-state. Facebook used to be brilliant for keeping up with them (ie mostly ignore them unless they're going to be in my part of the woods, and then use it to coordinate a catchup).

Recently it has passed some kind of threshold, or the algorithm has changed, or I have too many friends using it to give too many unimportant updates; because now it seems to throw away anything older than about 12-13 hours, which makes it nigh useless for the one thing it was really good at (for me). (And yes, I killed all the app spam, so it's not that)

Maybe this issue has nothing to do with Facebook, and has everything to do with the fact that you need to have a talk with your mom about a thing called BOUNDARIES.

Call in the next thirty minutes and get a free pack of SPACE

Already did. If you read the post, you'd see I acknowledge the different levels of this issue. Solving this with a talk with my mom is simply a bandaid IMO.

A comment I made to a friend my Mom has zero connection with should never end up in her newsfeed.

You acknowledged that she had called, but if 'different levels' is putting the blame on FB...well go ahead. She could have just ignored the image and thought to herself "oh that son of mine and his friends".

But she decided it was worth a phone call.

Just saying.

Wait, what was your mother angry about? Seeing a half naked man/woman or was it the content of your comment?

Not my comment. The picture of the naked guy with his fingers wrapped around his penis.

Welcome to the internet.

Diaspora has solved this fairly well ... I can't see anyones posts unless I am friends with them, and only then if they post in a certain "Aspect".

Makes it easy to separate work from friends and from family.

There is a big problem with that. Your newsfeed instantly becomes more boring by being less diverse.

I am actually not too worried about that. I enjoy being able to login, at a glance see that there is nothing new, and leave.

There is a general tip about not friending your Mom. While I appreciate that, in my case I mostly use facebook for keeping in touch with close and extended family spread across the world. So in my case, it's the friend that gets the ditch.

In an ideal world, though, I wouldn't need to ditch anyone. I have no qualms with my friends because no relationship is black and white and every relationship has a context. By Facebook showing my comment on a friend's picture in my Mom's newsfeed, it's showing the content alright, but without any context.

Wait I'm sorry I'm seriously confused, what what she mad at? A "half-naked American Idol winner"? Why would that make her fume with anger?

This is one of the major problems I have with Facebook, from a social-usability standpoint. They provide zero separation between your friends.

This, which came around during the "Google Circles" mistaken-hubbub, describes the problem very nicely: http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... your group of friends A may be offended by what group B does / not want to see it. But Facebook shows it all.

Or, your friend should set the privacy on that photo (or all photos by default) so that only friends can see it. Edit: downvotes? dang, what'd I miss?

Given the choice between a feature being highly viral, and respecting an appropriate level of privacy, Facebook will choose highly viral every time.

Such a scenario is one of the reasons I didn't mind deactivating my Facebook profile. I feel like I would be obligated to friend my parents and relatives, leading to at a minimum some amount of awkward monitoring.

His mistake was friending his mom. I stopped this issue in it's tracks. Even before my parents got facebook accounts, I told them that I love them, but I'm not going to be facebook friends with them.

It's kinda the opposite for me. About 75% of my communication is with my 20-30 close extended family members. It's done a great deal in keeping us together. Despite geographic distance, we can still have common inside jokes not too much unlike like old times when we lived in the same hood and met face to face.

Given how I use fb, if it is between my family and my friends, the friends lose out. I unfriended the friend, not my mom in this case.

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