Hacker News Reader

Comment by cliveowen | Hacker News Reader

This whole write-up is based on the assumption that everyone has hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, but let me tell you something: if you have hundreds of "friends" on Facebook then you're using it wrong. I have 54 friends on Facebook, I know all of them, if someone asks me to add him and I don't know him/barely know him, I don't fucking add him, it's that simple really.

Besides, even if you're so dumb that you can't stop adding strangers as friends, rest assured that on your feed you'll only see activity from the people with whom you interact the most. So, basically, the whole thing is pointless.

View on HN

I keep hearing this argument but I think it's impractical.

Because every person has a different idea about when and who it is appropriate to friend on Facebook and no one is really right or wrong, it's just a preference.

However this makes for awkward social situations.

For example your college classmate that you don't really know, adds you on Facebook because hey you are his classmate (or teammate). To him, that relationship is sufficient to justify connecting with someone on Facebook. To you, that may be far from it because you choose to keep ~60 friends but he likes to have a broader network.

This happens in all sorts of different contexts. For example you meet someone at a local community meetup, or you speak at a conference and people that you see there will ask to add you on Facebook.

At that point, how do you gracefully handle the situation? Do you really turn around and say "Uh...yeah thanks...but I only keep 'real' friends on Facebook". Or "Uh...sorry I can't commit to a Facebook friendship right now...you are not good enough of a friend just yet to qualify".

No matter how you put it, you come off as rude and weird and that person will likely not even come close to you any more. But your relationship would otherwise be valuable.

That's one of the many reasons I don't have a Facebook account.

What we're dealing with in this setting is the social pressure fueled by the faulty expectations of people regarding what's rude and what's not. As I see it, that's not something Facebook can address. Not now, not ever.

Wrong. What we're dealing with is a serious market-failure in a truly good system to keep in touch with the guy you just met at the meetup who you truly want to connect with. He just goes and uses Facebook, and you use nothing. Neither is good. And that's the problem, not the rudeness issue.

I agree with your assessment that each person has a different threshold for calling someone a "friend". But, FB lets you reject a request without providing a reason. I can see in your hypothetical situation that one classmate rejecting the other's request could be awkward if they meetup, in a physical sense, periodically. Otherwise, I think one should just reject and move on.

Personally, I try not to use FB as I do LinkedIn. It's strictly for my personal, not professional, network. With only enough exceptions to count on one hand, I don't accept anyone with whom I haven't spent a significant amount of time.

The drama at friending time sounds only perhaps a hundredth as dramatic as I've seen on the other end, the unfriend event. "What, you unfriended me because I posted a bible verse last year, what is wrong with you?" "If you unfriend me, I'm telling my mom, your aunt, to yell at your mom to get her to yell at you! (bonus points for hilarity if mom doesn't even use FB)" Even more hilarious is workplace warfare about one coworker unfriending the another where one of them happens to be a (more or less) protected class, like race or religion or orientation or political activism, probably 2/3 the population fit in here somehow, and they play that card in the ensuing battle which inevitably rolls management into it ("He unfriended me and I'm XYZ so he must have unfriended me because I'm XYZ so you need to fire him for creating an unfriendly workplace for XYZ or I'll go to your bosses boss who happens to be a XYZ") And I'm not making ANY of this up.

And I don't have a FB account at all - when I did have one, I used it similar to the way you described. But statistically you and I are anomalies.

The median friend count in 2011 was ~100 [1]. I'm not sure if any more recent confirmed numbers exist, but various articles from 2012 seem to indicate that's crept up to ~130, as well as an average add of ~7 friends a month.

So perhaps the median user is "so dumb that [they] can't stop adding strangers as friends", but that doesn't change the fact that this is the most common usage pattern.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of...

Yes, but that only means that users should be educated not that the service should be fundamentally changed. It's like recalling 100k cars because people can't use the stick shift.

If everybody's using it wrong, then it's broken.

THat's an interesting perspective.

Mine is that if everyone is using it wrong, it's time to revisit my assumptions around or definition of "using it right".

I actually just reviewed my friend list, deleted a few but still have about 150 friends. Mostly family/extended family (in-laws, cousins, etc). I'm a dancer on my free time so I have a group of dancers from over the years. I have another group of people I've met and do keep in touch from: church, school, and D&D. I have a few select from work (past and present). In review, they are people I like to know what's going on, but in some cases would never be able to have face to face interaction. Many are on the other side of the country or, for a few, the world. I don't add strangers or and I'm getting picky about acquaintances. I give this as an example of why your idea that of using it 'wrong' isn't looking at other situations.

But don't you have to add some noise to keep the _NSABOT_ happy?

Frankly I don't get all this paranoia about [put here your favorite government agency] spying. You're talking about criminal activities with your friends and you want a more secure way? there are a few. You're not talking about criminal activities but you're concerned someone might actually use gathered data/metadata to glean information about your private life? Then let me tell you something: first, there no evidence to support anyone has ever acted upon that information, second, the government does not focus on random individuals for the sake of it and third, if you're a person of interest, then you fucking had it coming and is gullible on your part to expect the slightest inkling of privacy on your electronic communications.

You shouldn't have been downvoted. But you should know that if you don't tow the party line on this topic you'll be marginalized no matter how valid, on-topic, or sane your comment is.

You're right though. First off, I hope your parent was joking, because if not, what he said makes no sense and isn't really related to the subject at hand. Second, while the whole domestic spying scandal is serious business, it doesn't have to be injected into every conversation. Third, you're right. There is no evidence to support that anyone has ever targeted a random individual for the sake of it and you probably shouldn't be using something like Facebook if you plan to discuss criminal activity, and yeah, no matter who you are you can't expect an inkling of privacy online. But that's not really specific to the government either. I can spy you, the guy down the street can, it doesn't take the kind of infrastructure the NSA has to spy on someone. Hell, I'd be more paranoid that random people are spying on me than the NSA. The randoms are more likely to target you for no reason while the NSA, from what we can gather, is more than happy to collect your data and never look at it - like ever.

Questioning the amount of paranoia we seem to have and being pro-NSA spying are not the same thing and it seems like a lot of people aren't able to separate out some of the nuance.

Yes, I was joking. And it was mildly amusing to see a rant in response. And speaking of towing the party line, I wonder how many things made it to the front page of hn only to be killed… I've already shared my opinions on this subject in regards to questioning[0], so feel free to look if you want more.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6135337

I knew you were joking it's just that up until this point I didn't intervene in the whole NSA debate and I was a bit stirred to see the thing creep even in an unrelated post, but hey, it was a joke, I get it ;)

…was a bit stirred to see the thing creep even in an unrelated post

It's good to get it out sometimes ;)

Maybe there should be a internet law about how anything being discussed on the internet dealing with technology will eventually delve into something on/about surveillance :P

Exactly, from the previous comment people might have thought that I heard about the whole NSA scandal and was OK with it, I'm not. I'm just saying that in my opinion the whole paranoia is downright unwarranted. I'd settle for quite worrisome.

Since linguistic pet peeves seem to be okay here, let me just add mine: it's "toeing the line", not "towing the line". Think of a bunch of people lining up (for a military inspection, I think, but it could as easily be for a subway) with their toes on a line, so that they're all together in a row.

Thank you. I've always wondered what the correct spelling was. I've seen both ways here and now I have a firm answer.

First they came for people that were doing big things, and I didn't speak out because I live a small life and hope to keep it that way so as to never be noticed by the Eye of Sauron...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com