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Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

Maybe my age (finished grad school in 2004) but I never created a Facebook account. Seemed like a waste of time and energy. And now? I’d gladly buy an Occulus but nope, need a Facebook account. Seems like a horrid company and where the cigarettes analogy seems apt and I used to smoke Marlboros as a kid. A lot of kids are now addicted to a product that actively harms them, Instaspam especially. Frankly love that FB makes it so hard to read stuff posted. Every time I’m linked to something there and it requires an account, I nope right out. I’ve banned Facebook from my life. Highly recommend not what you’ve lost, but what you’ll find instead.

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I don't use Facebook either. Part of the problem is that other people treat it as if everyone is on Facebook.

People will only invite you to events on Facebook. Restaurants will only post updates to Facebook. Businesses have support forums in Facebook groups. Etc.

You do miss out on a portion of the internet by not being on Facebook. But I think that's because people rely too much on it.

I keep a Facebook account for the sole reason that I don't want some derplgänger with the same name causing me employment trouble in the future.

It may sound like a dumb reason, but I have seen the pattern of some eponymous innocent suffering because lazy HR didn't verify waaaaaaay too many times to not take the threat seriously.

You realize by making an account and adding a picture you greatly increase the chance someone will clone your profile vs someone creating a profile with photos they have sourced from somewhere else. If the latter happens it is probably from your friend group.

Just keep the profile private and limit friends on FB. I try to keep the number of FB friends at Dunbars number.

Who said I had a picture of myself? I can post something proving it's me as necessary, which is what I use it for. Zero personal pictures, though.

I go through this frequently and it's not even due to Facebook, it's just due to having a stupidly common western name.

To the point of I have folders, digital and physical full of sworn statements I've had to make, and official court documents from six different states attesting "no the John Doe before you applying for this job is not the one who came up in your background check database for grand larceny, no he's not the one who came up for involuntary manslaughter either." and I'm always ready for that conversation later in the interview when I get an email from the recruiter/HR "hey, we have a question about something that came up in your background check"

This can cause a problem when dating as background checks become involved. Thankfully my SO realized it was a different person with the same name.

Even at a small town library there was another patron with my name.

I keep a (deactivated) Facebook account just to prevent Facebook leaking my acquaintances to any random with my name and email.

That's right - in 2021, Facebook doesn't make you immediately verify your email when you sign up! They eventually close the account if you don't verify but by that point whoever signed up with your name and email already has access to parts of your shadow profile Facebook leaks (ex through 'suggested friends').

cool. i have some experimenting to do in my name now.

You would need to have a very unique name for that to be necessary and you are also putting a lot of confidence in HR's ability to disambiguate the profiles if you indeed have a doppelganger.

On the contrary, I have an exceedingly common name, which is why I need to have my own account to point to, as compared to the other several dozen same-name folks who have the potential to cause me trouble. There's no trusting HR here, it's a matter of being ready up front.

Why not just tell HR that you don't have an account because you don't want people confusing you with another person?

Perfectly reasonable question. The answer is that it has been my experience (across multiple companies, over significant time) that they tend to think you're making excuses for not showing your real profile unless you have an actual profile to show them.

>> You do miss out...

I'm not confident that is true in any meaningful sense as it seems to align too nicely with what Facebook would like people to think.

I have a fb purely for tracking local events & with none of my friends attached to it. It makes a difference

There's lots of info on FB, behind soft walls. Lots of businesses don't have homepages, for example. Or people organize their events there. And the general network effect - by its nature, you miss out of everything that happens there.

I haven't stumbled on anything in the last 10 years that would even tempt me to go back on FB/Insta.

Events have died completely in my circle. It’s a WhatsApp group for parties now - appreciate the irony, but everyone also has 4 or 5 messaging apps so switching could happen quickly if prompted.

This is a similar issue I have with Twitter.

Direct link to the material--I can see it, if I'm trying to find additional material, nope.

The negative patterns are too bold.

Tbf its hard to find specific things/tweets you're looking for on Twitter even if you do have an account.

At least that's how it was until I stopped logging in about a year ago. But I can still access linked content. On mobile, I just have to paste the url into the browser address bar and it works.

> But I can still access linked content.

Yeah but it feels like navigating around gets weird if you're not logged, because any link from the direct-linked content (original tweet for RTs, comments, etc...) will navigate then immediately hide the information behind a big popup, and if you close that popup... it sends you back where you came from.

It's a recent anti-pattern they added. Possible solution: replace the "twitter.com" portion of the URL by "nitter.net" and you won't be nagged by things like that.

It's definitely a weird and (anonymous-)user-hostile design, but here's a trick: reloading the page instead of closing the popup does load the content without the popup. (Until you navigate to the next link, of course, after which you'll need another reload.)

Try a Nitter instance.

Most Nitter instances end up rate-limited and are unusable at least half of the time in my experience, this isn't really a practical solution.

I'm using Nitter redirect[1] for Firefox, so that any Twitter link automatically links me to the nitter.net frontend for that reason.

[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

> too bold

Well, they work as long as the company is powerful. And push people away as soon as the power reduces.

It's one of those policies that provide metastability, but increase the rate of change once the stability is lost. Powerful people normally like them, as they care much less about rate of change than about conserving power.

> I’d gladly buy an Occulus but nope, need a Facebook account

Facebook says that Oculus won't require a Facebook sign in anymore.

https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10114026973983491

Until they backpaddle on it again.

When they bought Oculus they made a definitive statement saying that Oculus devices will never need an FB account to use.

To me they lost all credibility. Not just because of this instance but many other instances of lying and deceit.

I bought an Occulus Quest 2 last week and had to sign in with Facebook

It sounds like "they're working on it", which is only a promise at best.

You can bypass Facebook if you want to jump through some hoops.

https://uploadvr.com/how-to-play-pc-vr-oculus-quest-2/

That's Link (Rift apps running on your PC, displaying on your Quest), not Quest apps.

Where in that statement are you getting that interpretation? Is it buried in the comments or something?

I just read and reread the Boz words and don’t see how any of it translates into “no Meta (Facebook) account needed”?

About two-thirds of the way down I see "we’re working on new ways to log into Quest that won’t require a Facebook account" -- which, of course, makes no promises that it will see the light of day.

(Would've bought an Oculus by now if it wasn't for that requirement.)

Thank you for clarifying - and now I am depressed about the clear degradation of my reading comprehension skills.

"landing some time next year"

It ain't much different if it ends up requiring a 'meta' account instead.

Precisely. Sort of like someone telling you they've given up cigarettes, then lighting up a cigar...

I am thinking FB doesn't care about us if we don't have a FB account.

We are not contributing to the metaverse, why would they? The value of selling a handful of games for approximately $100 of revenue is peanuts compared to their metaverse idea.

Given that FB probably loses money on each quest sold, I think it's likely they are happy every time one of us grumpy loners declines to purchase their device

Interestingly those born in 2004 don't necessarily have them either - my neighbour was born then and mentioned that their year group don't use FB at all.

You'll probably find they use Instagram instead, which is why they should never have been allowed to pruchase it.

It seems like its mostly old people on Facebook now, at least that's my perception as a millennial who interacts with mostly other millennials

Facebook is LinkedIn for families. Basically useless, mostly performative, but worth checking once a month just for connections.

Is it really worth it? I'm not sure what benefit people get out of either LinkedIn or Facebook. They seem like not only a time suck, but also a great way for presenting your personal information for people and corporations to harvest. Personally I value my privacy and data over whatever miniscule (if any) tangible benefit I would see from using such a service.

This isn't even mentioning the rampant misinformation and divisive bullshit permeating the platforms (yes both of them)

I use LinkedIn to passively trawl offers from recruiters and ask for references. Most offers aren't particularly good but a few random recruiting recruiting connections I made ended up being important. The data I give LinkedIn effectively matches my resume which I have to be comfortable to send to random people in the first place, so I'm not particularly worried about the data provided. I do not browse the feed or post anything publically. I only privately message people I'm connected with, or those who provided a job posting I was willing to apply to.

The more socially competent you are, the less useful this probably is. Many people probably have some useful network of friends they built in college. I have little to draw on aside from a handful of people I worked with which I had professional rapport with which I never developed a personal connection. So thus, I am stuck on LinkedIn on the off chance I need a new job and a reference.

From what I hear, the action is in the groups, while ungrouped facebook is a barren wasteland with older people sharing conspiracy theories and other urgent PSAs they think are important. Definitely still skews older, but people seem to attempt the groups for niche interests.

People also have large group chats, which is a trend across all networks and general interaction.

Easy to miss that this trend is happening if you aren't part of any.

Its publicly accessible content on social networks like this which are going by the way side. The engagement is much less visible.

> Maybe my age (finished grad school in 2004) but I never created a Facebook account.

Me neither. The "dumb fucks trusted me" vibe rubbed me the wrong way right out of the gate.

Wish someone had stopped them grabbing Whatsapp, etc., deleted my account there too.

I recently recreated a facebook account merely because many companies offer more prompt customer service through that platform. Instead of filling in some broken "contact us" form and wondering if you get a reply it's just one more way to track down customer service for things.

That said, I'm keeping their creepy apps off my phone...

Good luck with that, it is some years ago but all my experiences are install once, regret for life, there are some things that don't go away.

Unpopular opinion: Instagram and Pintrest are absolutely amazing for discovering aesthetics and visual culture. I don't use them for their intended purposes or any social need. Have no followers or I follow no one. Just save images and cultivate what I like.

Same here. I just didn't get why I'd want to broadcast every shit I took, or everything I ate. Low on substance, high on drama.

Fast forward to today, and we now know that Facebook and other social media are encouraging narcissistic behavior, because narcissists are easy to manipulate: They are highly likely to have multiple addictions, they are easy to emotionally provoke, have nearly no ability to moderate there own behavior, and they take any attack on there beliefs as a persona attack, and will hate there attacker forever, becoming flying monkeys.

I highly encourage everyone to watch the documovie: The Social Dilemma.

You can create an account that has none of your personal information. I understand why people don't have an FB account. I don't, and I use an Oculus . But the downside of having an FB account is they plant cookies on your browser or track you in their app.

If you are only using the FB account on your Oculus, its an Oculus account that calls itself an FB account. You need an account for most game devices these days and for Steam. I am not saying its perfect, I am saying that not using an Oculus because you are off FB doesn't make that much sense to me. I do exactly that.

One thing I can think of that might complicate this is that Facebook has a policy of not allowing nicknames if I understand correctly. Which is why they can also verify you with national ID and others if something happens (and it does).

How would I remain as anonymous as I am on Steam for the community and still work within Facebook's terms of service?

I know plenty of people with nicknames (generally, fake last names) on Facebook. They just have to "look" real. Perhaps use your middle name as your last name.

I did that back when I had an account about a decade ago, and some do gooder got into an argument with me, didn't like my opinion and reported my account. It got locked and they asked for a government issued ID. Fuck that. I never went to the site again. Good riddance.

Exact same happened to me - lots of snowflakes on Meta[stasize].

> You can create an account that has none of your personal information

Facebook pretends this is the case, but they use some dirty tricks to require personal information without explicitly requiring it.

In particular, if you create an account without a phone number, you'll find that within a day or two your account will inevitably be flagged for "suspicious" behavior, and you'll be required to enable two-factor-authentication with a valid phone number. (I assume the "suspicious" behavior here is your account existing without a phone number.)

You can mitigate this by attempting to friend a couple people upon account creation.

I've seen this pattern and the excuses people make for it too (anti spam prevention, as if there are no other anti spam prevention methods)

> But the downside of having an FB account is they plant cookies on your browser or track you in their app.

Use Firefox, it automatically puts Facebook in its own Firefox Container so no FB cookies tracking you everywhere. And don't use their app it's basically spyware.

Nobody needs a Facebook account but there is a lot on there to like. Instagram has a tremendous amount of creativity and craft (and a bunch of butt shots), WhatsApp is a low cost way for billions of people to text, Facebook lets me keep updated on old friends and acquaintances. Overall I think I get positive value from it.

And Reels, the TikTok competitor. TikTok is even worse than Facebook.

Is Tiktok worse than FB because of the way the platform is designed, or because of the way people are using it (trends etc), or something I’m not seeing?

From my perspective TikTok is worse because it’s algorithm is better at holding human addition, and it’s headquarters is located in an authoritative country. I don’t have any evidence to defend these statements, and it’s quite possible propaganda has influenced by opinion here. I’d love to hear from the experts.

It's interesting because they're both bad but in different ways. Facebook's addictive nature is in interacting with other people: FB wants you to start flame wars in the comments, share things around with people, etc. FB tries to connect you with other people to hate them. Facebook distorts a person's idea of OTHER PEOPLE. Facebook is like meeting the Duggers and assuming they're representative of all Americans. Facebook makes people angry and aggressive.

TT's addictive nature is more insidious because it's more internal: Humans are pattern-matching machines and TikTok will show you a LOT of very niche content to the point where your brain thinks it's important and true (think TV/movie product placement; they wouldn't do it if it didn't work). Because of TT's form, it's harder for the average person (non-creator) to be drawn into a social group, but it's easier for them to be firehosed into accepting false narratives through sheer repetition. TT distorts a person's idea of HOW PEOPLE LIVE; imagine if your main idea of how Americans live was USSR propaganda. TT makes people apathetic and prone to hug-boxes.

They're both taking advantage of the fight-or-flight mechanism, FB just wants you to fight and TT wants you to 'flee' (into its loving escapist arms, of course).

There are healthy use cases for both FB and TT (and even Twitter), but they're directly at odds with the incentives of the platforms themselves + we have a society full of unhealthy and traumatized people, so instead you get these evil clone versions.

I'd also say that both the US and China are authoritarian countries. China more so, but the mental health/addictive problems with TT are inherent to its design and medium decisions, not which nationality made it.

It's algo is actually showing me what I'm interested at not some reddit-tier meaningless political fighting. Despite headquartered in authoritative country I'm the user experience is better with less drama. Go figure.

TikTok seems like a more casual/fun experience to me. I suppose it depends on how you use it. My son and I have a great time watching animal videos, jokes and some other stuff.

I never got into instagram, but Facebook is always trying to lure me in with suggestive “interviews” of college girls and weird mom videos on the Facebook feed, which is otherwise very curated.

I would say TikTok is even more addictive than Facebook, considering its larger market share at this moment.

TikTok is a maximizer of wasted attention.

Tiktok actually shows you content you'd like to see. So in that sense it's "addictive." It shows me weird local commercials, retro computing stuff, and clips from old industrial films.

'Reels' is a lot worse. It shows you generic stuff that's slightly personalized by things you "liked" over a decade ago. No reason to use it.

I think they're removing the requirement to have an oculus tethered to an fb account if they haven't done so already.

No, it's the other way around. You can already no longer create a non-Facebook Oculus account, and some time next year they'll require Oculus accounts be "upgraded" to Facebook in order to use the devices at all.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-10-29-oculus-pla...

Interesting they've said that, but this is Facebook - I'll believe it when I see it, and even then be astonished if they make it possible to port purchases or de-Facebook an account created during the period when that has been mandatory.

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