The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square for my local community. It's where people go to discuss the community's political challenges. So many important dialogs about local issues happen on Facebook, and it's the only real way to be a part of those conversations. Things like zoning, planning, city and county budgeting, ordinances, and so on.
If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there.
We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.
I feel like this isn't so crazy of an idea, but any can't the city host it's own website with forums and everything? This could enable easier and more clear threading than Facebook, and you can look through history and pin topics/announcements. The library could be in charge of hosting it and archiving everything (isn't this already something libraries are supposed to do? The archiving of local news.) There's plenty of free software to do this too.
There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
Maybe a fork of some wiki application can act as a digital townhall library? They usually publish meeting notes on their websites, so why not on a wiki platform, many of them have discussion pages and you could add open sections for public suggestions and it could act as an archive or library for town information. It's just the matter of taking it seriously and giving it an appropriate budget like they do with any other public structure or organization. But if it proves to be valuable component of public organization it would be budgeted and administered appropriately.
>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square
Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily.
I'm not disagreeing with you (I've never used this service you linked) ... but what becomes "the town square" has nothing to do with how optimized or tuned it is for that purpose. People are gonna do what people are gonna do, and if you want to be involved with certain people, you gotta go where they are.
when I think of a local facebook group for a neighborhood its a bunch of people helping each other or complaining. stuff like "we're those gunshots, road xxx is closed so is taco bell, my cat is missing, hey this event is happening this weekend, im having trouble making rent this month." it works, because everyone is on it. network effect + a lack of baked in structure.
Nextdoor comes to mind, but not necessarily a local online town square which I agree with your comment that a source like that is invaluable to keep up with local issues.
I've seen too many stories of people discovering their neighbors are racist/classist assholes on Nextdoor to want to participate. Leave me a few illusions about the inherent goodness of people.
What if our very own public Libraries had the ability to host local communities' dialogs etc. One of the things that it would protect is "freedom" of speech and it would be a better platform for communities to voice their concerns etc, without the fear of having their data mined or even have their voices or issues removed, because it was offensive.
Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted - but I really like the idea of public libraries hosting community social networks. Librarians have traditionally been fiercely privacy conscious and they could provide an archived platform for local government as well.
When I bought my new house, I got to join the neighborhood Facebook group. That’s where all the news happens. They used to have a listserv, but the on onboarding is better / easier on Facebook and you get more features than a listserv - because everyone is already there plus threaded comments.
I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.
Facebook serves similar functions in my area, and is the best way you can find out if paving/waterline work/etc are causing street closures, or if wrecks or similar are causing a closure.
I think an app like Telegram or Signal should fill that place. FB is too feed algorithm driven. For a townsquare like requirement, a chat group should be sufficient.
It seems like we are all royally screwed if policy is now being decided on and only through facebook. I have never had a FB account and will never have one. It seems extremely crazy to be required to go through a bunch of legal terms of service just to participate in government. In fact it may be illegal technically.
I totally agree with you. And I'm very scared of the day a job, the school my kids go to or whatever important life activity will require me to have a facebook, whatsapp, linkedin, twitter or whatever account. We need something to replace these, possibly a federated, open standard, but I guess even the self hosted forums of yore were much better than this.
That seems extremely exaggerated. What’s illegal about private citizens choosing to use a service like Facebook to talk to each other?
If you want to “participate in government” nothing stops you from showing up to town or county council meetings, planning commissions, and so on, or from sending letters to your elected officials, or a phone call, or running for office yourself.
You still need to have a city council meeting etc... my guess is that FB just helps get the conversation going. My problem with FB townhalls is that it just degenerates into politics, gun rights and trolls. You also get out of towners weighing in usually as trolls. I think the local newspaper is better forum.
Then people should meet at the town hall and talked, this kind of stuff got done before facebook. And people where just as busy, bringing kids up going to work etc.
Maybe they should. And maybe people should handwrite letters like they used to. But even if it might be what they should do, it's not what they are going to do.
Discussing and taking part of a topic online is also about seeding motivation, it's as important as actually going to a place.
Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.
I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose of relationship/political drama.
Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.
This is great for you! Keep in mind though that some of us never fell in to the trap of compulsively checking FB constantly. I am quite certain that dropping FB wouldn't move my happiness barometer in either direction, it's just not a big enough part of my life to matter. I would lose touch with some people that I'm not keeping very closely in touch with anyway, and that's about it. This is like a recovering alcoholic recommending that everyone who drinks at all should stop immediately and entirely - it's not that it's bad advice, but not everyone is in the same situation.
Same here, moreover: I've got friends and acquittances in Serbia, Bulgaria, Germany, UK, US, Spain among other countries, as well as through several states in my home country. Given that I have lived in 6 different cities around the world, and have made good relationships on each of those, I really like maintaining a "thin" contact thread with them.
Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.
Same here. I use messenger occasionally to speak to some friends who use Facebook almost exclusively for that - I stopped posting anything or paying attention to the feed thing years ago.
Instead of cutting off those social media, we should post as many fake stuff as possible to mess around their big data, AI/machine learning algorithms.
Same, but I can attest that you can do it without deleting your accounts too - just delete the apps and remove bookmarks. I have family that still use social and removing myself would make it difficult for them since they like to post about us.
I don't think Woz's payment solution to "light" social interaction is not really feasible though.
I personally never got on; life is fine without. Do yourself a favor and just get rid of it all. You can communicate personally with people fine over other methods; the idea of "broadcasting" your thoughts is better accomplished by a blog (where you have freedom to express your thoughts rather than cramming them into small snippets); the idea of sharing every moment of your life (e.g. what you had for breakfast, accompanied by a photo) is unnecessary and psychologically unhealthy.
One notable exception I'm considering making: a read-only twitter account to follow security professionals. I have seen most people with lists of recommended security pros to follow, and I figure it could serve as a sort of free, meta-bulletin for security. Haven't done it yet, but considering.
I would do the same but I have a board games club which is organized via Facebook....and I have one or two friends who still organize events through FB. Otherwise I would certainly shut my account.
I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.
Searching FaBIGWA just sends me to this thread, and I'm struggling to decipher what is in there. Looks like Facebook... And a whole lot of other stuff I can't glean.
To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it.
Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy.
There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient.
I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account.
I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference.
For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me.
As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.
> I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people.
It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined.
And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days.
Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc).
I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook.
Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.
You want to have a vague idea of other peoples lives, people who don’t matter to you in any real way, and you aren’t even getting the real status, just the image they want to project through the social media distortion lens. So you decide to sacrifice your privacy and mental health for it. Makes sense.
> While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one.
Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.
There is a quite a large difference between the two.
Calling is an active interest. It requires specific action from the caller, and potentially interrupts the callee (which may or may not be desirable).
Facebook and other social media allows a more passive interest. The information about how the person is getting on is passed on, but the "caller" isn't needing to worry about disturbing the "callee" and the callee is not interrupted.
Sometimes we don't call because we don't care, we don't call because we don't want to impose.
This passive information forwarding replaces to an extent the part of the "village" culture that has been lost a bit as our populations have grown more and more densely packed yet the people we care to "follow" are often spreading geographically further apart. Because not everyone knows everyone, the "oh, did you hear" conversations don't spread as they once did: there are wider air gaps (filled with signal noise, i.e. the rest of that dense population) between the connected nodes in the network.
Of course social media is emulating the worst parts of that village culture grape-vine, as well as the useful parts...
Actually just wrote an edit to address this but I'll repeat here - I think it's a generational thing. It's not really about keeping up with specific people - when I want to do that, I just message them like you say (side note - in my experience people in my age group don't tend to have many people's phone numbers). Basically, I grew up using Facebook, which meant I've always had these constant life updates from people I know. So I've gotten used to it, and feel like I'd be losing something without it. Objectively, I think my life would be unaffected if I really were to delete Facebook, but I enjoy having those updates nonetheless. To be clear: these updates are usually information I wouldn't bother to find out otherwise.
It's sort of like watching the news - realistically a lot of news doesn't affect our day to day, but it's just interesting to see things happen. Like yesterday USA won the women's world cup. Did that have any impact on my life? Not at all, but it was nice to hear about. In that sense, Facebook is like a more personalized feed of news that always features people I at least used to know. It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again, but at this point I only check Facebook a couple times a week so I don't worry too much about it.
Not the person whom you're asking, but to me a phone call is extremely invasive, and it feels awkward to call anyone that is not a really close friend or relative. And I also don't particularly like to be on the receiving end of such a call. A text is much better, but still more awkward and invasive than Facebook for people that are just acquaintances that you see very seldom.
I think it's a generational thing. I'm 36 and I see that most people over my age accepts phone calls to nonclose friends or acquaintances as normal or even desirable, as you do, while most people under my age instinctively avoid them.
You're also constraining yourself to updated from people who use FB. What about the rest of those people? If you want to get updates (and update) multiple people, why not create an email list and blast all your friends and family? Or maybe a text message?
Seconded. I found that I didn’t lose anything by leaving Facebook. The “social network” I thought I had was just a list of names I was familiar with and begged the question about any real relationship which had manifested. I had many relationships which were paper thin and folded the moment I left Facebook.
That's a weird place to put your goalposts (why isn't it at video calls? or phones? or cars? or walking barefoot to your house?), but subscribe to whatever idea lets you feel superior, I guess.
I politely disagree but I think your viewpoint is valid.
(I don't understand why you're downvoted, so I upvoted you.)
But now: It used to be really fun to have online discussions with people who I used to know in real life, but because "life happened," I didn't get to see very often. That's why Facebook used to be fun, and why I politely disagree.
But, again, I think your viewpoint is totally valid and shouldn't be downvoted.
I deleted FB 4 years back and at that time I had around 1000 'friends' on FB. Needless to say I didn't miss a thing and life has been only better.
But there was one subtle interesting thing I noticed that nobody missed me on FB. Nobody was like, "wait, where did that guy disappear".
The people who mattered were always around me and are still around me.
Only after deleting FB I realized what a cancer FB was. I hear it has become even more cancerous.
The only thing I seriously want to give up is this Whatsapp app, especially because it is now FB product. Otherwise, the way I use Whatsapp, it doesn't pose much problem.
People might notice but just not saying anything. I notice when occasionally someone is not on FB anymore. I rarely point it out. Because the reason is always the same one or two reasons.
I recently deleted Reddit from my life. That was huge. I can turn off Twitter and would never know it was gone. But FB won't be that easy.
It's important to me for a number of reasons:
- Communities use it to communicate with their groups. I'm in business owner groups, collectives, local theater group, and some gaming/social groups that aren't as active.
- For many of these groups, FB is the ONLY way I'll get info about anything that is going on with them. And honestly, I don't mind. It works well.
- Businesses use it to send deals to their customers, notify them of events, post pictures, etc.
- I manage business Facebook pages as part of my business, so I can't get rid of my personal account.
- I also use the Marketplace a lot to sell off stuff from my house and it works brilliantly.
HOWEVER - I have technically stopped "using" Facebook.
For the last 3 years now, I've made my profile totally private. I haven't posted photos or shared stupid things. I un-followed (but stayed friends with) EVERYONE except my wife and parents and a close friend.
My news feed is empty except for posts from the groups I'm a part of and stuff from close family members.
And there's an added benefit - when I DO post something now, on a rare occasion, people actually take notice.
If everyone would only post when it's really important, the system would be useful and interesting. Otherwise, it's full of garbage.
Facebook is not all bad, but certain people ruin it with their constant garbage posting, and that's too bad.
Facebook has some utility if you're running a business or if you've found a really nice group of people on it, but I personally found it to be total trash and it's been at least 6 months since my profile was deleted. (yes, I know, Zuck still has backups and ML models trained on it)
I am so much more happier not being exposed to everyone thinking they're e-celebs, the back-patting, virtue signalling, constant outrage, pseudoscience, and all of that. I thought I'd be missing out on a lot by not being on Facebook, but people haven't forgotten me and now there's so much more to talk about when I actually meet people in person.
If you have a facebook login active then facebook is still tracking you and able to advertise to you, so you are using facebook for the only things they care about. You are still generating content (your web traffic via like buttons) and revenue (via ads).
> - Communities use it to communicate with their groups. I'm in business owner groups, collectives, local theater group, and some gaming/social groups that aren't as active.
If only there were another technology one could use to distribute messages by electronic means from one computer user to one or more recipients via a network.
I respect Woz and his contributions to computer science. Tbh tho every time I see an article like this it makes me scratch my head. It’s always something along the lines of “Woz says you should do something that has been old news and most anyone who would care is already doing or agrees with”. It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s just... why is this news? He’s just making a very safe statement for the audience being targeted.
It makes news for a couple of reasons. (and assuming this isn’t a rhetorical idealistic question about what is and isn’t news…)
1. He’s a notable technologist (or whatever term you’d prefer to use for someone who is seen as intrinsically linked with the rise of computation tech)
2. It’s Gizmodo, they’re not exactly looking for revolutionary stuff here.
3. It’s your standard confirmation bias as well. Most people who read the article probably already have fairly strong anti-facebook-usage feelings to begin with. This reaffirms their stance and belief by presenting someone who isn’t a dickhead as being on the same side.
All of the above leads to a click and a comment, which is good for the ol’ bottom ad-dollar :D.
Yeah I guess I just expect more out of the guy (Woz). To be fair, he doesn't owe me or anyone else shit. It's just a let down to see him never take a firm stance on anything until it's very very safe to do so.
Left 4 or 5 years ago for employer/work reasons. Had a couple of hundred friends, and a started few groups that accumulated thousands of members. Not surprisingly, everyone I mattered to managed to find me and reconnect via email, sms etc. I don’t miss it at all, and I’m happy I don’t waste time like that anymore!
Community argument is compelling, but there are so many ways for communities to stay in touch now. I don’t think it has to come at the cost of so many Facebook negatives (privacy, addiction, mental health, etc.)
The community argument isn't actually compelling. It creates "ghost-like" relationships, where you don't really know someone anymore and haven't for years, but act like you're still best friends, with occasional empty comments or likes. It's like eating cotton candy for dinner and acting like you have the energy a good steak would have given you. Many of them don't have email though, and phone chats are often difficult to coordinate. I think occasional visits is probably the best way to keep in touch with people you don't live near and thus see regularly. And if neither of you can manage to schedule that, then maybe there's no real connection there after all.
How can you do occasional visits if you don’t live nearby? A lot of people I know live across the country or in the middle of America or outside the US. Even seeing all of them occasionally would be very difficult. Unless you mean every few years? But that’s barely anything.
Readit News
If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there.
We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.
There are so many variants that could be done off of this too. A federation of these servers, as towns help one another balance and archive data. Or help communication between towns. I'm sure a discussion somewhere like HN could quickly improve on this idea in a way that would be robust and easy to implement (because a key thing is that we want to get small towns to be able to implement this)
Of course it could... but with tight public budgets it would likely be implemented so poorly as to be useless.
Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and localities. DTC is an open community-driven live discussion platform that matches you one-on-one with others to playfully challenge perspectives, while unlocking achievements. It's been my passion project for the last two years, and since beta, we've been growing steadily.
[1] https://dinnertable.chat/about
when I think of a local facebook group for a neighborhood its a bunch of people helping each other or complaining. stuff like "we're those gunshots, road xxx is closed so is taco bell, my cat is missing, hey this event is happening this weekend, im having trouble making rent this month." it works, because everyone is on it. network effect + a lack of baked in structure.
Of course it would not be a perfect platform, but as an American, we need to start understanding and protecting the liberties and rights our own Constitution is providing us.
Peace.
I really wish it were somewhere else so I didn’t have to log on. I’m just not sure where else it would be and still see the same level of engagement.
If you want to “participate in government” nothing stops you from showing up to town or county council meetings, planning commissions, and so on, or from sending letters to your elected officials, or a phone call, or running for office yourself.
Plus, having the ability to plan, discuss, reference, lookup etc - _while_ discussing something, saves a ton of time and effort that would be wasted when speaking face-to-face.
But a couple people leaving Facebook isn't going to lead to it.
Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.
I highly recommend cutting the cord.
Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.
I don't think Woz's payment solution to "light" social interaction is not really feasible though.
this is exactly why I deleted all my friends before I deleted my account.
One notable exception I'm considering making: a read-only twitter account to follow security professionals. I have seen most people with lists of recommended security pros to follow, and I figure it could serve as a sort of free, meta-bulletin for security. Haven't done it yet, but considering.
Twitter in particular has become a toilet, and there’s nothing about it I don’t miss.
Get back in touch with the real world, you’ll be a lot happier.
I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.
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(only exception was the Go I recently sold and the Quest I might get in near future)
Ask your doctor if happiness is right for you.
Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.
LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy.
There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient.
I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account.
I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference.
For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me.
As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.
It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined.
And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days.
Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc).
I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook.
Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.
Deleted Comment
Why do you choose not to call them and ask them how they are doing? I must admit, I do not really understand this "seeing how they are doing" statement, it confuses me as to why someone would spend time on facebook to see how another one is doing, but would not make the call to ask. Maybe I'm misreading it and the seeing part is the more relevant one.
Edit: anyone care to clarify what was downvote worthy about this comment? did it not contribute to the discussion in some way? if the answer is yes, I don't know why it didn't contribute to the discussion.
Calling is an active interest. It requires specific action from the caller, and potentially interrupts the callee (which may or may not be desirable).
Facebook and other social media allows a more passive interest. The information about how the person is getting on is passed on, but the "caller" isn't needing to worry about disturbing the "callee" and the callee is not interrupted.
Sometimes we don't call because we don't care, we don't call because we don't want to impose.
This passive information forwarding replaces to an extent the part of the "village" culture that has been lost a bit as our populations have grown more and more densely packed yet the people we care to "follow" are often spreading geographically further apart. Because not everyone knows everyone, the "oh, did you hear" conversations don't spread as they once did: there are wider air gaps (filled with signal noise, i.e. the rest of that dense population) between the connected nodes in the network.
Of course social media is emulating the worst parts of that village culture grape-vine, as well as the useful parts...
It's sort of like watching the news - realistically a lot of news doesn't affect our day to day, but it's just interesting to see things happen. Like yesterday USA won the women's world cup. Did that have any impact on my life? Not at all, but it was nice to hear about. In that sense, Facebook is like a more personalized feed of news that always features people I at least used to know. It feels a bit like a mild addiction since it's not totally rational to care about these tiny updates in the lives of people I'm unlikely to ever meet again, but at this point I only check Facebook a couple times a week so I don't worry too much about it.
I think it's a generational thing. I'm 36 and I see that most people over my age accepts phone calls to nonclose friends or acquaintances as normal or even desirable, as you do, while most people under my age instinctively avoid them.
Dead Comment
(I don't understand why you're downvoted, so I upvoted you.)
But now: It used to be really fun to have online discussions with people who I used to know in real life, but because "life happened," I didn't get to see very often. That's why Facebook used to be fun, and why I politely disagree.
But, again, I think your viewpoint is totally valid and shouldn't be downvoted.
But there was one subtle interesting thing I noticed that nobody missed me on FB. Nobody was like, "wait, where did that guy disappear".
The people who mattered were always around me and are still around me.
Only after deleting FB I realized what a cancer FB was. I hear it has become even more cancerous.
The only thing I seriously want to give up is this Whatsapp app, especially because it is now FB product. Otherwise, the way I use Whatsapp, it doesn't pose much problem.
It's important to me for a number of reasons:
- Communities use it to communicate with their groups. I'm in business owner groups, collectives, local theater group, and some gaming/social groups that aren't as active.
- For many of these groups, FB is the ONLY way I'll get info about anything that is going on with them. And honestly, I don't mind. It works well.
- Businesses use it to send deals to their customers, notify them of events, post pictures, etc.
- I manage business Facebook pages as part of my business, so I can't get rid of my personal account.
- I also use the Marketplace a lot to sell off stuff from my house and it works brilliantly.
HOWEVER - I have technically stopped "using" Facebook.
For the last 3 years now, I've made my profile totally private. I haven't posted photos or shared stupid things. I un-followed (but stayed friends with) EVERYONE except my wife and parents and a close friend.
My news feed is empty except for posts from the groups I'm a part of and stuff from close family members.
And there's an added benefit - when I DO post something now, on a rare occasion, people actually take notice.
If everyone would only post when it's really important, the system would be useful and interesting. Otherwise, it's full of garbage.
Facebook is not all bad, but certain people ruin it with their constant garbage posting, and that's too bad.
I am so much more happier not being exposed to everyone thinking they're e-celebs, the back-patting, virtue signalling, constant outrage, pseudoscience, and all of that. I thought I'd be missing out on a lot by not being on Facebook, but people haven't forgotten me and now there's so much more to talk about when I actually meet people in person.
A private life is one of healthy solitude.
It's quite easy to avoid their tracking actually.
Deleted Comment
If only there were another technology one could use to distribute messages by electronic means from one computer user to one or more recipients via a network.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1. He’s a notable technologist (or whatever term you’d prefer to use for someone who is seen as intrinsically linked with the rise of computation tech) 2. It’s Gizmodo, they’re not exactly looking for revolutionary stuff here. 3. It’s your standard confirmation bias as well. Most people who read the article probably already have fairly strong anti-facebook-usage feelings to begin with. This reaffirms their stance and belief by presenting someone who isn’t a dickhead as being on the same side.
All of the above leads to a click and a comment, which is good for the ol’ bottom ad-dollar :D.
Community argument is compelling, but there are so many ways for communities to stay in touch now. I don’t think it has to come at the cost of so many Facebook negatives (privacy, addiction, mental health, etc.)