This is the most alarming and interesting point for me:
"Facebook will market you your future before you’ve even gotten there, they’ll use predictive algorithms to figure out what’s your likely future and then try to make that even more likely. They’ll get better at programming you – they’ll reduce your spontaneity. And they can use your face and name to advertise through you, that’s what you’ve agreed to."
The order in which you are presented with items in your feed, which likes by which friends you see, your previous actions (most of which you cannot likely recall, but all of which facebook has a perfect memory), and many other details are not only used to advertise to you - they're used to build you into the type of person that will be more susceptible to advertising in the future.
Molding and shaping opinion and personality is nothing new, but it has never been this precise, this interactive, and this pervasive. The stimulus, response, and reward loop has never been tighter. Those who use these services are being trained to exhibit particular valuable traits and behaviors, and the level of control over these manipulations will only improve as data is collected and algorithms are refined.
If you've been using a service like Facebook for several years, they know who you have been at each point in time. Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it instead. If you're not continually aware of each small nudge in a particular direction, then your mind is absorbing and adjusting to these changes without you knowing about it.
I'd love to read more about this, and am sort of morbidly fascinated by the methods by which these mechanisms operate, and just how powerful these types of control can get.
I work in a related area (prediction, though not in the AdTech market) and keep myself up to date on the literature.
Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it instead.
Nothing like this exists beyond very general models. There are some mood-state models, but they are short term (people argue if hourly data is too sparse for them to be useful).
The general models are roughly what you'd expect: if you are 18-22 you are likely to be a student, 55+ considering retirement. I've never seen any research on pushing people along paths, beyond things like education ads trying to get people to take courses, job ads trying to get people to change jobs and dating ads trying to get people to change partners.
Whilst general models maybe possible, my suspicion is that there are too many confounding factors for them to be very useful.
I would like to say I don't use FB. I do, but only give them my mug with big sunglasses on. Big sunglasses! I only give up an email address. I never go to that account. That account is for "the one that got away". It didn't work out as planned. To be perfectly honest, I don't like my picture taken, or even asked for. I gave it to DMV, and reluctantly gave it to Costco. (Costco will never get another picture. I only utilize their pharmacy, and that doesn't require a membership picture.)
I have another fake FB account, and gave them a fake picture--Eddie Haskel's head shot. I only use at as a convent way to enter certain websites. Once FB is gone--it's going to be deactivated.
I have a feeling I'm older than most of you. Giving up my picture, and personal information is very hard.
I used to think it was because I was sensitive over my appearance. I look like Shrek. Big Irish head.
I don't think that's the reason. I'm just a private person, and honestly don't like being photographed? And even more important, I don't like being pigeonholed by FB, or any marketing website.
I hope people in the future refuse to give up their image, and personal likes/dislikes. Or, demand complete control over all data they give up.
I don't use Facebook. But I'm noticing these trends elsewhere - in online Ads. I was browsing for "interesting things" on Amazon recently, one such thing was a hand powered torch light. It was interesting because it recharged via mechanical energy but I knew that the dynamo would be crappy and it would stop working after a couple of days. So just left it there.
Then, magically, when I was reading a blog which had Google Ads in it, I saw an Ad on the right which showed "Hand-pump based rechargeable batteries" and I was like "That's so cool! I want to buy it", then realized how Google's algorithm was influencing me to buy things that I didn't even know existed.
Somehow Google was able to make out that I'm interested in things that are hand-powered. I'd like to think it was random, but I know that's not the case.
That's certainly the hope. But I'm not sure it will turn out as intended though. The thing about people on Facebook is that they are people on Facebook. It might capture some of who they are (or who they want people to think they are anyway) through the lens of social networking. But it's going to be at best a one dimensional view and I'm not sure how effective at summarizing or manipulating people (that part is coming later:).
I quit Facebook last year because it started ruining my family relationships. I started seeing the side of people that I never saw before and I didn't like it. I saw family & friends say and do things that were done to grab other people's attention. I also saw people, that I knew very well, pretend to be something they were not. I saw friends become enemies over pointless arguments.
In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time, not the people I knew in real life.
After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them.
How? There is an easy solution to being inundated with things you don't want to see. Unfollow anyone who regularly posts things you don't want to see. I've done this. I've unfollowed pretty much everyone on Facebook, except for a few people / groups. I also hide posts that I don't like, but come from people I still want to hear from (I've heard this gets fed into FB's ranking algo for you).
Now my feed is mostly interesting news stories / interesting commentary / educational content / conversations on Facebook groups related to my interests. My FB news feed is actually better than Twitter now, albeit with 30x less content. Tangentially, this is why I appreciate the Twitter algorithm change.
Now I spend less than 20 minutes a day on Facebook. I don't get why people feel the need to delete the account altogether.
I don't get why people feel the need to delete the
account altogether.
Can I ask how old you are? Growing up, Facebook was not just an aside: for a brief moment in my life, Facebook was life. It's where things happened. I'm now 25 and glad I've never stepped foot on Facebook soil since I was halfway past 18. My personal experience is that it was a vile substitute for social life and I don't miss it one bit. So my point is that depending on the demographics, Facebook can mean a totally different thing. For a young man growing up, no Facebook meant no girls, no parties, no fun - and that is a travesty.
Edit: I don't understand how my comment is controversial - it's an anecdote. To the risk of sinking even further: would downvoters care to express themselves?
This is exactly what I've done with my FB newsfeed. You really do have to be ruthless with unfollowing people. But now my feed is just a stream of stories from the Times, Economist, Atlantic, etc. Some public figures post interesting stuff to: Yann Lecunn, etc.
My solution has been the following: Create a selected Friends list on FB and only click on that when logging in via my laptop, since it'd take more work to unfollow those I don't want to hear from in my normal feed. Then, per recent news regarding deleting FB app to increase battery life, I deleted both it and Messenger as well, and now just access it via mobile Safari, going straight to the aforementioned selected Friends list. This also solves being notified all the time from either FB or Messenger, as I only see notifications when I click on the FB icon I've created via Safari.
I don't do FB. The problem is, at least the community here at campus seems so saturated with it that about every interaction I have with new people begins with inquiry about it or some other social media thing.
I decide to look into some new club or political group or about anything? Primary communication method: FB. This monopoly over our communication they have, I think it sucks for non-users.
edit.addendum. I realized monopoly is poor choice of word because it is not total: Instagram and Snapchat and whatever is the social media thing du jour exist. However, as alternatives they are quite similar. I wonder how young adults used to socialise, say, a decade or two ago?
Two decades ago we went to parties at people's apartments or houses. We also met at a few different diners and bars where you could wander in and run into someone you knew, or wait till someone you knew showed up. We ran into each other walking across campus -- there was no "distance learning" in the mid-80s (to speak of, anyway). We went in big groups to movies and concerts.
People in these sort of shifting sub-groups would split off or join new sub-groups as they were introduced by and to others in the larger social scene. It was quite interesting, actually. I met people from very different backgrounds and with very different interests than mine, which made the world a much bigger place.
And somehow this math and science geek ended up with a history and Russian degree, friends who make movies in Hollywood and have active roles on TV, a publisher, a bunch of artists who do their thing quietly, homemakers, lawyers, social workers, professors, and a guy who helped discover new elements with the Russians and works at Lawrence Livermore. Do all of them know each other? No, but a bunch of them do.
I had a facebook account for about a month six or seven years ago but quickly deleted it. I don't stay in touch with all these people still, but at least two dozen of them would open their home to me if I showed up on their doorstep. When I got divorced 10 years ago, I got some phone numbers and called a few of them. One even asked if I needed money(!) since the divorce led to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and lots of bad poems.
I honestly feel sorry for my daughter's generation (she's 27) because I see the reality of her social life and it's pathetic compared to mine - and I'm basically socially inept.
In sum, f* facebook and all the others. They contribute nothing of value compared to real interaction with real people in real places.
I recently found a newsfeed eradicator extension that hides the newsfeed whenever you visit Facebook but still let's you check groups, message, and see notifications. I've found it to be a pretty happy balance between continuing to use facebook as a communication tool and not letting it suck me in time-wise.
I was at university in the 90's (before people had cell phones). It sucked - you would put physical flyers up for events (which was kind of ok, but you had no idea who was turning up, or of any questions), and to meet people you had to arrange it 24 hours in advance, and if they weren't there (because of transport or whatever) you'd have to wait until that evening to call their landline.
It was dreadful, and people who complain about social media have no idea how much simpler things are now.
I think it's interesting that despite Facebook being vastly uncool, it still fundamentally meets its original need, which is socialising in a university environment.
I'm in college and Messenger has pretty much replaced texting unless it's something urgent/an emergency. I've recently made friends with some people (a few weeks) and I still don't know their number. I just talk to them on Messenger. It's honestly an interesting shift.
> You are receiving this email because you recently registered for Facebook
...received in May 2006, at the end of my second year of university. A friend had been bugging everyone to sign up, but he was one of the less social/outgoing people, so this is months after Facebook was available at that university.
In November "Alternative Music Society" created a Facebook group — this was the people I spent the most time socialising with. Typically, someone would be organised and would have found an interesting gig, and perhaps negotiated discounted entry, either by phone or email to the gig promoter. They'd let everyone know using a university mailing list, which every club or society was given — joining a fairly casual society like AMS was basically a matter of joining the mailing list. We'd meet up in the student union bar (student-run bar) before heading to the gig; if people were late they'd text.
Then we'd go to a nightclub (perhaps also with a discount), and impress ourselves by getting home afterwards. No-one had a smartphone, though almost everyone carried a mobile phone. A small part of the appeal of the group was confidence in getting home easily: if we went to a gig in some obscure bit of industrial wasteland, someone would know a decent way home by night bus. (Actually not that difficult, London has very good public maps etc, but it would be daunting for freshers.)
Things like houseparties or groups of friends socialising would be arranged face-to-face, by email, or by SMS. Computing students checked their email more often than was healthy, but someone studying maths might manage a couple of days without using a computer, and was best contacted by SMS.
Regarding _finding_ the interesting gigs: most often by word-of-mouth (i.e. SMS/email/face-to-face) but otherwise by being handed a flier while queuing to get in somewhere, from the listings poster on the door of a venue, from venue / band websites, or by subscribing to a mailing list run by a promoter (the person who books a band + venue and sells tickets). Bigger events would also be in the TimeOut magazine listings, or the student newspapers. Last.fm's events section was useful too, they were a new startup but based in London.
A list of all student clubs and societies was on the student union website[1] and was also distributed as a booklet to all freshers.
Online maps and a public transport journey planner were pretty mature, so you'll need to ask someone 10 years older than me how they managed before that :-) (Well, I know: everyone in London would own an "A-Z" — a street map + street index of every street in the metropolis. For night-time public transport, I think the general method was to take a bus to a particular central location — Trafalgar Square — and know the way home from there.)
I had a small digital camera for taking photos, but very few photos went further than my computer. I probably put a few on my LiveJournal, which I used for a while for keeping in contact with friends from secondary school.
Having said all that, just like now it wasn't difficult to find students who moved between lectures and their residence and rarely ventured elsewhere.
He deplores those poor cabbies? I deplore all those poor riders who couldn't hail cabs and had to choose between worse and worst options because of the cabbies' government imposed monopoly. (What do you do when you can't hail a cab? Wait for hours? Walk? Ride for hours on public transit that goes everywhere but your destination? Give up on going where you need to go?)
Just like (apparently) most others here, I seem to use Facebook mostly to keep in touch with my family and (close?) friends. I unfollow pretty much everyone but my mom and wife. Facebook turned me on to adblock when they kept showing me ads for a degree when I had already earned that same degree from a better local school (and put it in my info on Facebook - so they were basically shamelessly ripping of the advertiser.) Those things make Facebook about a weekly experience now for me. I keep in touch professionally on LinkedIn.
For better or worse, I get my news on Hacker News moreso than any other place. I don't really even bother with the New York Times or Wall Street Journal any more. Everything in the news lately seems designed to appeal to outrage, and I don't want to participate in that anymore.
> For better or worse, I get my news on Hacker News moreso than any other place. I don't really even bother with the New York Times or Wall Street Journal any more. Everything in the news lately seems designed to appeal to outrage, and I don't want to participate in that anymore.
I've done the same for news. I can attest that I'm generally happier for it. I can sometimes see when someone is looking to talk to me with news induced outage. I'm learning how to give neutral answers that don't feed any fires, unless I believe I'll actually get a thoughtful and considerate conversation.
Regarding Uber, his argument wasn't so much "poor cabbies" on its own, but seemed to be more like "look at where the money is going, it's going out of the economy and into investors, growth".
So, poor cabbies is one thing, but it would be more about the redistribution of wealth from a community of people to a company. Uber is not a ride sharing service, it's a business model.
The article makes clear his view: If we think short sighted that it's only good for getting rides - we are missing the point. And he says that much about digital natives - they miss the point.
The man makes a good point. I quit Facebook for lent, and frankly, I don't miss it... And feel better for it.
One way or another, it has stopped being fun for me and started becoming a drag. Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.
> Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.
A valid criticism of facebook, but that's not at all what he's talking about. He's saying that to the extent that he uses facebook for his career (ie: marketing his books), he feels that he's giving away the contents of his book and that is ultimately hurting sales:
Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane!
It's a completely ridiculous notion that's contrary to what anyone who is making money in the digital economy has figured out: digital content is marketing for stuff you can charge for. The fact that Rushkoff can't find stuff to charge for is indicative of a painful truth that he should consider: he's actually not creating that much value.
He complains about getting 3c for every 100k youtube views, but never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.
It's actually a pretty marxist philosophy (the labor theory of value), and it has huge limitations in terms of describing our economy.
Unfollow and hide posts. That takes care of about almost all of it. The last part is people with interesting stuff that you want to know, and insane ramblings; for them I don't have a good solution.
This isn't a facebook problem, I have done the same with Twitter and would do it with HN if I could.
I've noticed over the last two to three years that everyone on my Facebook has begun posting less and less content of substance. They no longer talk politics, they no longer debate things, they post a lot fewer personal updates, and about 10% of my friends have turned their profiles off / gone dark.
My theory is: during the first several years of the mass adoption wave of Facebook, people socially splurged. That resulted in endless fights, arguments, hurt feelings, learning too much about friends (lesser friends, casual friends), seeing too much drama out of family and friends, and so on. Now my FB feed is like the old MySpace, it's mostly trash posts, with some life photos thrown in (photos are the sole thing people update that have substance now), friends have dramatically pulled back on posting anything that might draw ire or cause tension. In my FB feed, almost all of the substance has been wiped out. I had been using FB on a daily basis for nearly a decade, and now I simply no longer care about the product. I actually look forward to going dark on FB, sometime this year whenever I get around to 'deleting' everything off of it.
I view social media as a kind of Pascal's wager. If I post something potentially controversial I risk major harassment, in exchange for a tiny benefit. Social media is enabling mob justice with a chilling effect on real discourse.
This ain't news to me; I'm sure just about most self-aware persons are capable of (or already have) come to the conclusion that social media is cancerous for a positive mental state.
That's not even mentioning the data mining and privacy issues that arise from such high profile companies having access to such thorough personal information. For them, it's business as usual and a rather understandable response. If you have such info at hand, why not use it to further expand your business?
Unfortunately this thought process results in active harm to users (disregarding purposeful malice altogether). I am so thankful that I ditched social media consumption back in high school.
It feels like advertising should be regulated by the government... Just like smoking, alcohol, drugs and gambling. It has gone too far. I can relate to every point in this article on a personal level. People don't think for themselves anymore - All we do is follow and give praise - And social media decides for us who is deserving of that praise!
His talk on "Present Shock" just expanded my mind a little bit. Embedded in the article: https://vimeo.com/65904419
"We recast this digital renaissance--this ability to really program our lives, to get slack [free time]--we recast this as a new opportunity to somehow pump more steroidal life into the NASDAQ stock exchange."
"Human time is where we're trying to expand our markets... but it's all because we're basing our entire model of society and economics on an obsolete 13th-century-printing-press economic OS!"
Not sure I agree--I'd prefer growth to steady state--but things start to make sense when I'm aware of the "theorem" underpinning a system.
Great interview. I am going to buy his latest book. This hit me:"What’s most pernicious about it is that we are developing companies that are designed to do little more than take money out of the system – they are all extractive." I have been trying to avoid feeding the beasts, but it is difficult.
I am trying to condition myself to jump on GNU Social,instead of Twitter and G+. It is working somewhat; today about 3/4 of the hour I spent on social media was on GNU Social and even though it lacks some convenience I am able to find good things to read and meeting interesting people.
Substituting a small company like duck duck go for Google is fairly easy. Try to support local stores in preference to Amazon is difficult, even knowing that shopping on Amazon reduces my local shopping options in the future.
Somehow we need to support local economies, support people creating products with either no middlemen or at least fair marketplaces that perhaps only taking away 5% fees from producers. The game is rigged for large corporations, but we can still "win" if even a small minority of people participate in local economies and non corporate web properties.
Catherine Austin Fitts has a saying that I like: "There are people who make pies, and people who steal other people's pies." (Ref: solari.com)
BTW, I went to buy his latest book and I could save about $10 buying it on Amazon, save about $6 buying it from a physical bookstore that would mail it to me, or save $0 using the http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781617230172 site listed on the author's web site.
In the end, I went to my local library's web site and put a hold on two of his other recent books.
This seems more in spirit of avoiding large companies.
One of the things I dislike about social networks is that people carry over short snarky commenting style to places on the net where you expect people to post more thoughtful comments. Or technical forums where your trying to have a detailed conversation and solve problems. It can really add unnecessary noise to otherwise productive boards.
I really wish people would take a breather and slow down before posting outside of those services.
They also seem to be more of a time sink then anything else where people can procrastinate from doing more productive or important things.
I suppose I'm guilty of doing the same thing on HN on occasion.
One of my pet peeves on Twitter is people posting sarcastic posts about an upcoming news event like the results of a primary. Sorry, but it's not funny and I don't care - I just want to hear the real news not your lame attempt at a joke.
I think there is a difference between utility driven social media like LinkedIn or Nextdoor (and to an extent messaging apps like WhatsApp if you consider that social media) and apps like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram which are less utility driven and more entertainment driven.
Of course, one can derive utility from the entertainment driven apps, but it's often disproportionate to the gravity of the entertainment and naval gazing that they are optimized for.
Go on LinkedIn or Nextdoor and you see much less of this type of naval gazing. People might be trying to find a job, gain insight into an org, keep their resume updated, with LinkedIn. Or they might be trying to find a babysitter, sell an item, or offer a service/recommendation to their neighbors on Nextdoor. Yes, both platforms have their flaws, but at the end of the day they are indeed driven by and based around a utility rather than naval gazing.
But those too, you have to be careful with in how you use them. I'm not quite sure where I was going with this comment, but I wanted to point out that a distinction and difference does exist between types of social media.
Living in Silicon Valley, I get the impression that teenagers are looking at their phones less than they were five years ago. A few years ago, I'd have to dodge people on sidewalks and in store aisles who had completely lost track of their surroundings. That seems to have stopped. I see teenagers pull out a phone, interact with it briefly, then put it away. Also, everybody seems to be in vibrate mode now; I seldom hear a ringtone.
Facebook made the internet a home for a billion people. Mr Rushkoff is certainly an important voice, but I'll play devil's advocate. We can never know the initial motives or future designs of Zuckerberg et al, nonetheless these actors have built products/services that people demand. They have introduced advanced technology to vast swathes of people, familiarised them with computers, and drawn them into (the periphery of) hacker culture.
Hypothetically, more intelligent/predictive advertising should decrease the quantity of ads we see, and work in the favour of local firms. AI (including predictive-advertising) has the potential for good. People want to support local businesses. With the introduction of localised / native advertising, there is the potential for the business next door to 'get you' as a customer, as opposed to Amazon etc. The 'last mile' problem might work in the favour of small firms.
i only use hn and reddit and group email threads. gave up all the rest many years ago because i recognized the negative patterns it was reinforcing in my own life and others'.
if you're thinking about it, do it. you're recognizing that there's a problem in your own life. if you've never thought about it, you're probably fine.
"Uber has nothing to do with helping people get rides in towns."
I may be simpleminded here, but didn't Uber make it a lot easier to get rides by making app-based hailing work reliably? Instead of standing on a street corner and waving?
I appreciate that there is probably more substance to his beliefs than what is presented here, but reading these preposterous claims without any support made this a really irritating interview to read.
[+] [-] oniMaker|10 years ago|reply
"Facebook will market you your future before you’ve even gotten there, they’ll use predictive algorithms to figure out what’s your likely future and then try to make that even more likely. They’ll get better at programming you – they’ll reduce your spontaneity. And they can use your face and name to advertise through you, that’s what you’ve agreed to."
The order in which you are presented with items in your feed, which likes by which friends you see, your previous actions (most of which you cannot likely recall, but all of which facebook has a perfect memory), and many other details are not only used to advertise to you - they're used to build you into the type of person that will be more susceptible to advertising in the future.
Molding and shaping opinion and personality is nothing new, but it has never been this precise, this interactive, and this pervasive. The stimulus, response, and reward loop has never been tighter. Those who use these services are being trained to exhibit particular valuable traits and behaviors, and the level of control over these manipulations will only improve as data is collected and algorithms are refined.
If you've been using a service like Facebook for several years, they know who you have been at each point in time. Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it instead. If you're not continually aware of each small nudge in a particular direction, then your mind is absorbing and adjusting to these changes without you knowing about it.
I'd love to read more about this, and am sort of morbidly fascinated by the methods by which these mechanisms operate, and just how powerful these types of control can get.
[+] [-] nl|10 years ago|reply
Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it instead.
Nothing like this exists beyond very general models. There are some mood-state models, but they are short term (people argue if hourly data is too sparse for them to be useful).
The general models are roughly what you'd expect: if you are 18-22 you are likely to be a student, 55+ considering retirement. I've never seen any research on pushing people along paths, beyond things like education ads trying to get people to take courses, job ads trying to get people to change jobs and dating ads trying to get people to change partners.
Whilst general models maybe possible, my suspicion is that there are too many confounding factors for them to be very useful.
[+] [-] marincounty|10 years ago|reply
I have another fake FB account, and gave them a fake picture--Eddie Haskel's head shot. I only use at as a convent way to enter certain websites. Once FB is gone--it's going to be deactivated.
I have a feeling I'm older than most of you. Giving up my picture, and personal information is very hard. I used to think it was because I was sensitive over my appearance. I look like Shrek. Big Irish head.
I don't think that's the reason. I'm just a private person, and honestly don't like being photographed? And even more important, I don't like being pigeonholed by FB, or any marketing website.
I hope people in the future refuse to give up their image, and personal likes/dislikes. Or, demand complete control over all data they give up.
[+] [-] pinkunicorn|10 years ago|reply
Then, magically, when I was reading a blog which had Google Ads in it, I saw an Ad on the right which showed "Hand-pump based rechargeable batteries" and I was like "That's so cool! I want to buy it", then realized how Google's algorithm was influencing me to buy things that I didn't even know existed.
Somehow Google was able to make out that I'm interested in things that are hand-powered. I'd like to think it was random, but I know that's not the case.
[+] [-] jqm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jerry2|10 years ago|reply
In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time, not the people I knew in real life.
After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them.
Maybe this is just my experience.
[+] [-] argonaut|10 years ago|reply
How? There is an easy solution to being inundated with things you don't want to see. Unfollow anyone who regularly posts things you don't want to see. I've done this. I've unfollowed pretty much everyone on Facebook, except for a few people / groups. I also hide posts that I don't like, but come from people I still want to hear from (I've heard this gets fed into FB's ranking algo for you).
Now my feed is mostly interesting news stories / interesting commentary / educational content / conversations on Facebook groups related to my interests. My FB news feed is actually better than Twitter now, albeit with 30x less content. Tangentially, this is why I appreciate the Twitter algorithm change.
Now I spend less than 20 minutes a day on Facebook. I don't get why people feel the need to delete the account altogether.
[+] [-] chm|10 years ago|reply
Edit: I don't understand how my comment is controversial - it's an anecdote. To the risk of sinking even further: would downvoters care to express themselves?
[+] [-] eachro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm...
Cutting sources of noise is surprisingly effective.
[+] [-] zerooneinfinity|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] personlurking|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
http://www.fbpurity.com/
[+] [-] ageek123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 77pt77|10 years ago|reply
As someone who uses neither I was really struggling to understand whether this was good or bad.
after reading the rest of the comment I now think you mean it's good.
[+] [-] maus42|10 years ago|reply
I decide to look into some new club or political group or about anything? Primary communication method: FB. This monopoly over our communication they have, I think it sucks for non-users.
edit.addendum. I realized monopoly is poor choice of word because it is not total: Instagram and Snapchat and whatever is the social media thing du jour exist. However, as alternatives they are quite similar. I wonder how young adults used to socialise, say, a decade or two ago?
[+] [-] sverige|10 years ago|reply
People in these sort of shifting sub-groups would split off or join new sub-groups as they were introduced by and to others in the larger social scene. It was quite interesting, actually. I met people from very different backgrounds and with very different interests than mine, which made the world a much bigger place.
And somehow this math and science geek ended up with a history and Russian degree, friends who make movies in Hollywood and have active roles on TV, a publisher, a bunch of artists who do their thing quietly, homemakers, lawyers, social workers, professors, and a guy who helped discover new elements with the Russians and works at Lawrence Livermore. Do all of them know each other? No, but a bunch of them do.
I had a facebook account for about a month six or seven years ago but quickly deleted it. I don't stay in touch with all these people still, but at least two dozen of them would open their home to me if I showed up on their doorstep. When I got divorced 10 years ago, I got some phone numbers and called a few of them. One even asked if I needed money(!) since the divorce led to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and lots of bad poems.
I honestly feel sorry for my daughter's generation (she's 27) because I see the reality of her social life and it's pathetic compared to mine - and I'm basically socially inept.
In sum, f* facebook and all the others. They contribute nothing of value compared to real interaction with real people in real places.
[+] [-] mosquito242|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
[+] [-] nl|10 years ago|reply
It was dreadful, and people who complain about social media have no idea how much simpler things are now.
[+] [-] tfgg|10 years ago|reply
I think it's interesting that despite Facebook being vastly uncool, it still fundamentally meets its original need, which is socialising in a university environment.
[+] [-] sotojuan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leephillips|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symbiote|10 years ago|reply
> You are receiving this email because you recently registered for Facebook
...received in May 2006, at the end of my second year of university. A friend had been bugging everyone to sign up, but he was one of the less social/outgoing people, so this is months after Facebook was available at that university.
In November "Alternative Music Society" created a Facebook group — this was the people I spent the most time socialising with. Typically, someone would be organised and would have found an interesting gig, and perhaps negotiated discounted entry, either by phone or email to the gig promoter. They'd let everyone know using a university mailing list, which every club or society was given — joining a fairly casual society like AMS was basically a matter of joining the mailing list. We'd meet up in the student union bar (student-run bar) before heading to the gig; if people were late they'd text.
Then we'd go to a nightclub (perhaps also with a discount), and impress ourselves by getting home afterwards. No-one had a smartphone, though almost everyone carried a mobile phone. A small part of the appeal of the group was confidence in getting home easily: if we went to a gig in some obscure bit of industrial wasteland, someone would know a decent way home by night bus. (Actually not that difficult, London has very good public maps etc, but it would be daunting for freshers.)
Things like houseparties or groups of friends socialising would be arranged face-to-face, by email, or by SMS. Computing students checked their email more often than was healthy, but someone studying maths might manage a couple of days without using a computer, and was best contacted by SMS.
Regarding _finding_ the interesting gigs: most often by word-of-mouth (i.e. SMS/email/face-to-face) but otherwise by being handed a flier while queuing to get in somewhere, from the listings poster on the door of a venue, from venue / band websites, or by subscribing to a mailing list run by a promoter (the person who books a band + venue and sells tickets). Bigger events would also be in the TimeOut magazine listings, or the student newspapers. Last.fm's events section was useful too, they were a new startup but based in London.
A list of all student clubs and societies was on the student union website[1] and was also distributed as a booklet to all freshers.
Online maps and a public transport journey planner were pretty mature, so you'll need to ask someone 10 years older than me how they managed before that :-) (Well, I know: everyone in London would own an "A-Z" — a street map + street index of every street in the metropolis. For night-time public transport, I think the general method was to take a bus to a particular central location — Trafalgar Square — and know the way home from there.)
I had a small digital camera for taking photos, but very few photos went further than my computer. I probably put a few on my LiveJournal, which I used for a while for keeping in contact with friends from secondary school.
Having said all that, just like now it wasn't difficult to find students who moved between lectures and their residence and rarely ventured elsewhere.
[1] Still is, of course: https://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/activities
[+] [-] aaronchall|10 years ago|reply
He deplores those poor cabbies? I deplore all those poor riders who couldn't hail cabs and had to choose between worse and worst options because of the cabbies' government imposed monopoly. (What do you do when you can't hail a cab? Wait for hours? Walk? Ride for hours on public transit that goes everywhere but your destination? Give up on going where you need to go?)
Just like (apparently) most others here, I seem to use Facebook mostly to keep in touch with my family and (close?) friends. I unfollow pretty much everyone but my mom and wife. Facebook turned me on to adblock when they kept showing me ads for a degree when I had already earned that same degree from a better local school (and put it in my info on Facebook - so they were basically shamelessly ripping of the advertiser.) Those things make Facebook about a weekly experience now for me. I keep in touch professionally on LinkedIn.
For better or worse, I get my news on Hacker News moreso than any other place. I don't really even bother with the New York Times or Wall Street Journal any more. Everything in the news lately seems designed to appeal to outrage, and I don't want to participate in that anymore.
[+] [-] eric-hu|10 years ago|reply
I've done the same for news. I can attest that I'm generally happier for it. I can sometimes see when someone is looking to talk to me with news induced outage. I'm learning how to give neutral answers that don't feed any fires, unless I believe I'll actually get a thoughtful and considerate conversation.
[+] [-] chippy|10 years ago|reply
So, poor cabbies is one thing, but it would be more about the redistribution of wealth from a community of people to a company. Uber is not a ride sharing service, it's a business model.
The article makes clear his view: If we think short sighted that it's only good for getting rides - we are missing the point. And he says that much about digital natives - they miss the point.
[+] [-] Spooky23|10 years ago|reply
One way or another, it has stopped being fun for me and started becoming a drag. Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go there.
[+] [-] wdewind|10 years ago|reply
A valid criticism of facebook, but that's not at all what he's talking about. He's saying that to the extent that he uses facebook for his career (ie: marketing his books), he feels that he's giving away the contents of his book and that is ultimately hurting sales:
Professionally, I’m thinking it may be good for one’s career and business to be off social media altogether. Chris Anderson was wrong. “Free” doesn’t lead to anything but more free. Working for free isn’t leverage to do a talk for loads of money; now they even want you to talk for free. What am I supposed to do? Join YouTube and get three cents for every 100,000 views of my video? That is crap; that is insane!
It's a completely ridiculous notion that's contrary to what anyone who is making money in the digital economy has figured out: digital content is marketing for stuff you can charge for. The fact that Rushkoff can't find stuff to charge for is indicative of a painful truth that he should consider: he's actually not creating that much value.
He complains about getting 3c for every 100k youtube views, but never at all considers justifying why people should listen to him, simply that it costs him time to create this content.
It's actually a pretty marxist philosophy (the labor theory of value), and it has huge limitations in terms of describing our economy.
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|10 years ago|reply
This isn't a facebook problem, I have done the same with Twitter and would do it with HN if I could.
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
My theory is: during the first several years of the mass adoption wave of Facebook, people socially splurged. That resulted in endless fights, arguments, hurt feelings, learning too much about friends (lesser friends, casual friends), seeing too much drama out of family and friends, and so on. Now my FB feed is like the old MySpace, it's mostly trash posts, with some life photos thrown in (photos are the sole thing people update that have substance now), friends have dramatically pulled back on posting anything that might draw ire or cause tension. In my FB feed, almost all of the substance has been wiped out. I had been using FB on a daily basis for nearly a decade, and now I simply no longer care about the product. I actually look forward to going dark on FB, sometime this year whenever I get around to 'deleting' everything off of it.
[+] [-] plasticchris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewwiese|10 years ago|reply
That's not even mentioning the data mining and privacy issues that arise from such high profile companies having access to such thorough personal information. For them, it's business as usual and a rather understandable response. If you have such info at hand, why not use it to further expand your business?
Unfortunately this thought process results in active harm to users (disregarding purposeful malice altogether). I am so thankful that I ditched social media consumption back in high school.
[+] [-] jondubois|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pshc|10 years ago|reply
"We recast this digital renaissance--this ability to really program our lives, to get slack [free time]--we recast this as a new opportunity to somehow pump more steroidal life into the NASDAQ stock exchange."
"Human time is where we're trying to expand our markets... but it's all because we're basing our entire model of society and economics on an obsolete 13th-century-printing-press economic OS!"
Not sure I agree--I'd prefer growth to steady state--but things start to make sense when I'm aware of the "theorem" underpinning a system.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|10 years ago|reply
I am trying to condition myself to jump on GNU Social,instead of Twitter and G+. It is working somewhat; today about 3/4 of the hour I spent on social media was on GNU Social and even though it lacks some convenience I am able to find good things to read and meeting interesting people.
Substituting a small company like duck duck go for Google is fairly easy. Try to support local stores in preference to Amazon is difficult, even knowing that shopping on Amazon reduces my local shopping options in the future.
Somehow we need to support local economies, support people creating products with either no middlemen or at least fair marketplaces that perhaps only taking away 5% fees from producers. The game is rigged for large corporations, but we can still "win" if even a small minority of people participate in local economies and non corporate web properties.
Catherine Austin Fitts has a saying that I like: "There are people who make pies, and people who steal other people's pies." (Ref: solari.com)
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|10 years ago|reply
In the end, I went to my local library's web site and put a hold on two of his other recent books.
This seems more in spirit of avoiding large companies.
[+] [-] schizoidboy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petra|10 years ago|reply
Google isn't purely extractive .look at all the value their search engine offers. Look at their investmen
[+] [-] generic_user|10 years ago|reply
I really wish people would take a breather and slow down before posting outside of those services.
They also seem to be more of a time sink then anything else where people can procrastinate from doing more productive or important things.
I suppose I'm guilty of doing the same thing on HN on occasion.
[+] [-] AznHisoka|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askafriend|10 years ago|reply
Of course, one can derive utility from the entertainment driven apps, but it's often disproportionate to the gravity of the entertainment and naval gazing that they are optimized for.
Go on LinkedIn or Nextdoor and you see much less of this type of naval gazing. People might be trying to find a job, gain insight into an org, keep their resume updated, with LinkedIn. Or they might be trying to find a babysitter, sell an item, or offer a service/recommendation to their neighbors on Nextdoor. Yes, both platforms have their flaws, but at the end of the day they are indeed driven by and based around a utility rather than naval gazing.
But those too, you have to be careful with in how you use them. I'm not quite sure where I was going with this comment, but I wanted to point out that a distinction and difference does exist between types of social media.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
Living in Silicon Valley, I get the impression that teenagers are looking at their phones less than they were five years ago. A few years ago, I'd have to dodge people on sidewalks and in store aisles who had completely lost track of their surroundings. That seems to have stopped. I see teenagers pull out a phone, interact with it briefly, then put it away. Also, everybody seems to be in vibrate mode now; I seldom hear a ringtone.
[+] [-] Johnnybe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathgenius|10 years ago|reply
Wow, writers get to have so much fun.
[+] [-] arrty88|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simorgh|10 years ago|reply
Hypothetically, more intelligent/predictive advertising should decrease the quantity of ads we see, and work in the favour of local firms. AI (including predictive-advertising) has the potential for good. People want to support local businesses. With the introduction of localised / native advertising, there is the potential for the business next door to 'get you' as a customer, as opposed to Amazon etc. The 'last mile' problem might work in the favour of small firms.
[+] [-] beachstartup|10 years ago|reply
if you're thinking about it, do it. you're recognizing that there's a problem in your own life. if you've never thought about it, you're probably fine.
[+] [-] abalone|10 years ago|reply
I may be simpleminded here, but didn't Uber make it a lot easier to get rides by making app-based hailing work reliably? Instead of standing on a street corner and waving?
[+] [-] moultano|10 years ago|reply