These articles ignore people’s real alternatives. I’m in my 30s and have a small child. While I love to fly into Chicago or New York for a night of drinking with my still-single friends, that’s not really something I get to do more than once every couple of months. Seeing my wife’s extended family (3,000 miles away in the west coast) is a once every year thing, and seeing my extended family (7,000 miles away in Asia) is maybe a once a decade thing. But Facebook lets me see the woodworking project my Chicago friend is working on, the delicious things my father in law is making for the holidays, and at least know what my cousins’ kids look like these days. Far from being junk food, Facebook lets me maintain the most basic and important human relationships.
What did people in my situation do before Facebook? My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person. They’d sit down in front of the TV after work. Their social lives were narrow, focused heavily on home life and the kids. That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
Having quit Facebook some 4+ years ago, I think about these things too and have come to the conclusion that:
a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* .
b) A solution that existed before Facebook were X-Mas cards. So, I think that's what I'll be doing when I no longer see my parents and close friends daily.
* On a side note, my mom calls my grandma for an hour or so weekly and they frequently talk about what they cooked and exchange recipes, but that's more personal than a Facebook/Instagram post.
Are you kidding? I'm an X'er and my parents are boomers, and I can assure you we all had an absolute ball before Facebook came along. "Not going out in the evenings to see friends, sitting watching TV, having narrow social lives" - seriously? Maybe in your family / community / culture, but not mine, and not many, many others too.
I'd even be tempted to speculate that those of us who aren't Facebook addicts are the ones who are able to socialise just fine without it, thank you very much, if it weren't for the fact that I know plenty of good-living, fun-loving Facebookers too.
I would love it if Facebook worked that way for me. But unfortunately its just selfies and crappy shares of motivational or "funny" memes. The people that I am interested in mostly never post anything - and me neither, because I a) would like to share with close friends and family but not everyone I am connected to* and b) I find it too stressful to having to worry that my post won't garner many likes and thus will be a "social failure"
* Yes, I know that I can set the target group but I never set it up and is too much work for just a small posting
Facebook is giving you the illusion of having relationships and appeals to some nostalgic programming in our brains.
I have a once close friend who moved out to Oregon from the east coast. I talk to him every two years when somebody dies at home. Knowing that his kid won the pinewood derby doesn’t give us anything more in common.
Yea, I can't really understand why all the complaints about Facebook are so maximalizing. I feel like the authors of all these hitpieces are personally unable to engage in healthy, limited usage of it, so they cast it as as some universal evil that every person is powerless to resist.
I got Facebook in 2006, when it was only college kids (and some high school kids), and my usage throughout college was 99% photo sharing and event planning. 10 years later, my usage of Facebook is......99% photo sharing, event planning, and messaging.
At no point did Facebook launch a feature that pointed a gun at your head and forced you to mindlessly scroll through your feed. Blaming the product/platform for people's unhealthy use of it is like blaming dessert or alcohol for existing: I avoid both of those things a lot more than most people do, but I also wouldn't want a world that completely lacked them.
For sure, Facebook allows you to keep up with distant family and friends. But my take is that devoting a lot of mental and emotional energy to distant relationships comes at the expense of time that could be spent developing local relationships, which can be more important.
I think a good metaphor is after you've broken up with someone, it can be healthier not to hold onto to a lot of photos, memorabilia, and so on associated with your ex. It's not that you are throwing your ex away; you're making room for a new person.
I've sometimes observed people are so caught up in the lives of old school friends, old colleagues, family and such that they don't have room for new, local relationships.
I think many people can use Facebook in a healthy way. The same can be said of alcohol, video games, reddit, and Internet news feeds. But, for many others, all of these can become damaging addictions. A lot depends on the individual at hand.
Sounds like we lived differently than you did -- My parents had people over to play cards and other games on many nights. Or we would go over to someone else's house. On nights when it was just the family at home, we played card games and board games. We also went for bikes rides, went out for ice cream, went on hikes. We threw frisbees, played soccer and football, on the weekends, we'd go skiing, fishing, camping. We spent many evenings out with our own friends as well, once we turned about 7 or 8, and the neighborhood kids would all run around in a pack together. As for knowing what everyone else is up to, photos would come in the mail, along with letters. When we did get together, slide shows would ensue. Phone calls were the primary way to keep in touch with family and friends, and my older relatives still maintain a weekly call with everyone in the family.
Sure, TV as a time waster also existed. And most people did spend some nights watching it. But it was not all night, every night. At least not for the majority of people.
> What did people in my situation do before Facebook?
I dunno, maybe pick up the phone and have an actual conversation?
> My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person.
What the... what is this? It's like some bizarre propaganda written by Zuck himself.
> That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
Yeah, better to observe your friends from a distance like some kind of science project instead of having genuine interactions with them. Great improvement.
But you don't need Facebook for any of that. If you are truly really interested on what your family and friends are up to, message them, call them up or use video chat. That way you can have a direct and personal communication with them, which is more important to human relationships than the passive mass consumption of whatever content, good or bad, they are spitting out on their feed.
People with children generally move to the suburbs because urban developers aren't really building family friendly housing and its hard to be social with the suburban model, which is that you get a lot of space but you therefore don't have very many neighbors and you aren't within walking distance of the town center.
Your TV comment reminds me that one of the biggest shows was "Cheers" where you kinda get to feel like your hanging out with people your age.
I travel quite a lot and have friends in different countries. I don't really see the need the care about their daily live. However i love to just show up and give them a call and have hours of stuff to talk about.
I think this is just biased on beeing used to the 'Facebook way' outside of this bubble your arguments just sound strange. (like why would I care what they cook or how their children look right now?)
People in your situation before Facebook probably:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the telephone
People in your situation before phones probably:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the mail/telegram
3) Didn't have that many remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel
People in your situation before telegrams/mail:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Didn't usually have any remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel and/or communications
I think if you will do some reading you'll discover that life proceeded quite handily prior to the availability of long distance communications and/or travel to the general populace.
> Their social lives were narrow, focused heavily on home life and the kids. That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
Is it really tho? I'm not even conservative, I just think that there's certainly something to be said about a social life focused on the kids and home life, instead of replacing that with hollow attention seeking on Facebook.
What it's being replaced with? People who post pictures of their children, which to many is often the whole extent of the interaction with their kids; Just another prop to collect likes on FB.
I admit that's just my anecdotal personal experience from a really bad case, I still think it's a very relevant angle to this as many people do use Facebook as a form of escapism from reality.
I have to agree with you here. Although an interaction via Facebook doesn´t come close to a personal one, I still think it is beneficial in some ways. Of course especially when you´re far away from the people you want to connect with. I use Facebook for work and personally. But for me, it has become more of a news feed than actual communication with friends. My inner circle and acquaintances I tend to have regular contact with both have my phone number and can either call me or Whatsapp me.
That used to be the case for me, but now a lot of that energy moved to WhatsApp (which is also Facebook, but a different product). It's better in every way -- the communication is private, it's two way so people feel closer, and I don't get overwhelmed by memes and ads.
This probably couldn't have happened without Facebook proper (now my parents are on WhatsApp), but I think mobile chat groups are a much better form-factor for the type of communication you want.
Facebook exists because it works for a section of the population. I do not like it. I do not use it. If someone likes it, I let them use it. I throw in a word of caution regarding privacy concerns etc. I, however, do not expect them to honor my views.
Gee, sounds like you shouldn’t have had kids if you wanted to fly into Chicago or New York every night. Having children is a choice. Looks like you’ve made yours.
>That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
The frame of reference of TV might not be the right one. I think the counterfactual scenario is a better comparison point. We should consider what the internet and social media COULD have been had it not been monopolized by a handful of closed, ad-tech motivated platforms.
The internet before Facebook was still a social place that fostered connections between people. I made friends all over the world through UseNet, IRC, PHPBB forums, personal blogs like Xanga or MySpace, and other such platforms. But those weren't conducive to collecting data or serving advertising, so we they fell behind on investment, development, and market penetration.
Even Facebook didn't used to focus on a feed on informations shoved in your face, that was the ad platform they built on top of it. It used to be a collection of personal profile pages, essentially a mini-bio to look people up on. They had associated forum groups you could make/sign up for to socialize with individual groups of people. They've since turned those from conversational groups into "pages" that you subscribe to, better to have content pushed at you but less good at fostering conversation among people.
There are still good group-chatting platforms for actual friends to talk to each other. I keep in touch with my family around the world through WhatsApp (since colonized by Facebook natch). I maintain friendships with people from my MMO days through GroupMe. And I hear the kids today are all about Discord. These all facilitate more human-to-human interactions than platforms like Facebook or Instagram do, IMO.
Discussion forums maintain a persistent sense of identity for the participants so you interact foremost with a person and secondarily with whatever they happen to be saying at a given time on a given topic. Stuff like Facebook privileges content first, so the focus is on the message itself and secondarily on the person making it (good for marketing, bad for socializing).
Even discussion forums like HN or Reddit focus on content over identity. The old PHP forums had avatars and garish signatures and a whole bunch of other visual cues to give each speaker a distinct identity. Everything anyone said is strongly associated with an individual so you build up reputation and identity over time, which is essential for developing a form of community. Platforms like this make one person's comments indistinguishable from any other, so it becomes really hard to develop human connections with anyone.
You don't even need avatars and visual cues. IRC didn't have those, but what it did have was a requirement that someone had to BE IN THE ROOM to see what you're saying. So it's a vibe that's more like a conversation in a pub. You actually have to be aware of who is around and listening when you talk rather than screaming into a whirlwind of activity and seeing who replies. It's cozier. You're aware that you're talking specifically to a group of people that is around, which causes you to put yourself in their shoes when you talk rather than being all solipsistic.
And all of that is before we even get into the gross KPI-derived metrics (likes, shares, ratios, etc.) for evaluating our contributions that Facebook-style social media does which is a whole separate and disgusting thing.
Ever since deleting facebook I've felt so much ___. It's only once I quit the site I was able to take a long hard look at my perception of ____ and realized that everyone else does ____ while I should do _____. I realized that I'm actually ____, not ____. I started handling my _____ relationships in a healthier, more ____ manner.
I confess, most of what I consume via the internet is of little use to me. Sure, some of it might be interesting; some of it my present itself as relevant; but most of it (the truth is) life would go on without it.
Don't take this the wrong way, but push come to shove, HN falls into this low truly impactful life nutrition as well. This is not a critique. It's just that despite my semi-best attempts the signal to noice ratio remains suboptimal.
I have the same sentiment with my own internet habits. Could I be doing something more useful? Totally. I could be going on a walk, reading a book, or practicing a hobby. However, I don't think it's too harmful to stroll through the same rolodex of websites as a form of leisure even if the content provided doesn't nourish the mind and the body. If I'm being honest with myself, I'd find another vapid avenue of entertainment had I no access to the internet. The concerning aspect with social media (and online content in general) is the constant desire to check back in on relatively frequent intervals. I try and stay away as often as I can but I still sense that pull to check in..
So as a girl working in tech, all I remember about facebook back when I had one was everytime a new girl started working at our company, all the guys flocked to one guys computer and they stalked the crap out of her one Facebook, and by the time she walked through the door they knew who she was dating, had already decided he wasn't good enough for her and were already in competition to date her and trying to woo her by pretending to have all the same interest and the poor girl is like first day on the job and she thinks shes going to have a normal life.
I've seen this happen at three tech companies multiple times at each so I'm not willing to entertain the group of guys who I KNOW are going to comment on this and say "well not every guy is like that". True, but it only takes a few at every company to make a girl feel like a targeted object more than an employee.
Once the facebook search came out (way after I got rid of it) I was a manager managing about 25 guys in my tech firm and they used to use the facebook search to search by age, relationship status of all the females in the company constantly on the prowl.
Was so gross and terrifying and made me happy I didnt have one.
Another time about three years after college a guy I had never seen or met before came up to me at a restaurant and started blabbing on about my life, asking me if I was still dating that deuschbag from college and openly admitted who knew all of this from my facebook back in college and asked me what I was up to now. I mean wow, couldn't possible be more happy that people DON't know what I'm up to.
Not to mention old guys are creepy and use it to stare at all the bikini pics of their friends daughters.
I wish I could be ignorant and dumb enough to not know all this but unfortunately I work with a bunch of creepy men twice my age in tech for years now and they assume I don't notice these things.
If you are a girl in tech, youre better off not having a facebook, you honestly cannot even begin to fathom how many men are keeping tabs on you.
I'm not a mod but I'll still say that this is frowned upon. Wrt the downvote itself, I promptly rewarded you with mine for your representing of stalking as a male only phenomenon. This blanket statements blaming men for everything really grosses me out and does not help at all with the feminist cause. Saying "hey you're all nasty pigs" is not persuasive at all, especially when I at the receiving end of the attack am not at all guilty of what you blame every single person with.
That's not just the tech industry. I've never worked in a place that it doesn't happen. I've uncomfortably watched it in the past but took a hard line when a female coworker's first question to me about my new hire was: "Is she hot?"
I responded rather abruptly and forcefully so that everyone within earshot could hear: "She's quite good at what she does."
Interesting article, and I'm usually a fan of Nautilus pieces, but isn't this a bit obvious? Almost like 2017 is getting to be the year it's fashionable to poo poo social media (and Facebook in particular). Haven't used the site since about 2010 'cause the rank smell of the Skinner box made my nose curl from afar.
I'm baffled that psych studies have to be referenced for people to see the obvious; and I'm certainly not on a higher plane of self-aware existence, either.
It’s a built in community of people who are likely there because of ritual and tradition (am Catholic) and do not care about talking about startups or entrepreneurship (a breathtaking relief sometimes).
Church and religion has gotten a lot well-justified complaints over the years, but by liberal and moderately-conservative people abandoning it in droves, it only made it more conservative and dogmatic sadly.
Also if you think “hey I can’t go to church they don’t believe in XYZ” just know that something like 40%+ of priests believe that gay marriage is possibly within the church’s right to support (again citing Catholic stuff here), so there is a lot more support than you think but political change is hard and it’s harder if you stay home.
Also I will say that it’s almost “cool” to go to church now. It’s been, again for good reasons such as pointless cultural battles in the 90’s that American churches waged, cool to not do religious stuff but now it’s so passé. Whenever I see a person railing against religion on Reddit I can’t help but think they are exactly the person we could have used in the 1920s at the Snopes Trial, but otherwise their viewpoint is entirely unhelpful and conformist today.
Facebook shouldn't be used to replace social interactions, it should be used to augment them.
It is easy to make facebook bad, and that's a problem, but its a problem that all social sites have. If you go to a message board and that message board has frequent posters who pride themselves in stirring the pot to increase activity, it might be good short term, but long term its a poor habit for those posters and its a miserable experience for other users.
If you use facebook as an outlet for negativity you'll find that misery loves company. If you use facebook to interact with people in comments, but don't interact in real life it will turn hollow at some point.
I feel like there are two problems. First is that people prefer to vilify facebook than to offer solutions to whatever problem they are facing. Second is that there is no roadmap to steering one's own facebook experience into a positive one once it has gone south.
For instance... if in 2016 you were active in politics because of the election, it's likely that you still have a bunch of political discussion and news within your news feed and ads. And all of that is increasingly negative and polarizing as those businesses and interests try desperately to maintain your mindshare. If you want to get rid of it, there is no preference. You have to train it with your newfound lack of interest. You have to fix your own behavior, facebook doesn't have a way of fixing it for you.
The same kind of thing applies to real social interactions. If you isolated yourself into online-only interaction or online-centric interaction, you have to change. But how? Well, it's not that hard if you put thought into it, but few people actually put any thought into it.
I don't know what facebok or any platform can do to resolve this problem. Maybe there's a secondary niche market for online social coaching or profile fixing.
I think cigarettes are a great comparison. I heard it a few years back.
When popular, a huge amount of the population used cigarettes despite growing research showing that it had a slight but consistent harmful effect. A hooked individual is unlikely to stop using even when given this evidence, as the product is addictive and gets stronger with network effects. Younger generations understood the harm better and had to avoid regular temptation to engage.
Comparisons to heroin are overblown. Nobody is losing their identity, money or life due to facebook. It's just a little bad and very addictive.
* Posts were fully encrypted so even facebook couldn't see read them
Meaning:
* There's no public posting
* They can't data mine
* They can't sell your data
* You could create different user groups to post to
* Everyone in a group had their own server side and/or local
copy of all posts to that group
* You could unfriend or ignore users
* You could create filters by users or groups and keep them off your main "timeline" (also complex filters based on attributes like title, content, photos)
* You could delete your copy of posts but not other people's copy
* You could easily download all the data including posts and pictures any time you want
* You could easily set up internal or private "facebooks" on your own servers
* If you forget your password, there's no recovering anything.
* You don't need a separate app for private messaging
I have deactivated FB since last Jan. Never felt any urge to return. But Reddit seems to be hard to quit as the majority of the time it delivers the garbage disguised as information. As a person who was on FB only for news feeds, Reddit seems to be the perfect shelter for me.
Anyone who choses to use FB is just not thinking. I could get joining Instagram, Snapchat, etc b/c of friends. But even if you don't care about privacy, don;t care about algorithms censoring human expression, and don't care about unauthorized physiological experiments to influence your emotions, why would you choose a platform with tons of ads, a terrible UI that fills up timelines with every time someone uploads a new profile, is slow as hell, and is a haphazard mess of sloppily assembled groups with all-caps titles. It's not attractive. It's not addictive. It's both morally and graphically disgusting at every level.
I'm beginning to think the latter is intentional, just like scam email with copious misspellings.
I also dont get all that hate either. Just use it as a tool for what its good for. For me that is mainly to stay in the know about (1) events hosted by friends, (2) activities in common interest groups, (3) the life of friends and family overseas.
- Dont use your real name, gender, nationality, etc. Just create a random identity.
- Dont post pictures, ask friends to not post pics of you. Remove all tags. NEVER EVER POST PICS OF YOUR KIDS.
- tailor your news feed: Aggressivly remove/unfollow people/groups that add only trivial noise and no interesting content. In doing so, I actually started to enjoy my thinned out feed.
- comb through your friend list once a year (I always do after New Years) and clean house. Some people collect friends like trophys and are proud of their 1254 contacts. Instead, do the opposite: Try to keep it as small as possible. Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact? Remove people that do not add value to your life.
- Dont use the messanger app. Turn off all notifications.
EDIT: Why jump through all these hoops? FB gives me a unique value. The trick is to fold all the virtual social network back into real life. This is especially useful when you are in multiple disjunct groups. Most of my social activities are organized through FB:
- arrange the next casual soccer kick
- see when is the next social dance and who is going
- friend organizes a christmas dinner party
- other friend goes to a science slam, I might join
- who wants to go bouldering this weekend?
- see this neat trick in the "Upcycling" group how to reuse an old ...
- oh, this old cafe in my borough is getting kicked out. Friends are organizing a solidarity march.
Since almost everybody is on it, organizing/getting this info would be so much harder without FB.
I also like to keep people in my feed that have a contrairian view point to mine. Keeps you sharp and sometimes you learn that your viewpoint might not have the best argument...
> Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact? Remove people that do not add value to your life.
I do a different test. It's called "Do you care about me?"
If I got in a car crash over the weekend, would you even know? If you found out, would you visit me in the hospital?
If the answer is yes: but they're family, I already have their contact info. For non-family, that group fluctuates, and more often than not, it's zero. I'm fine with the number staying there. Benefits include: Less drama, breakups, regrets, and more time to get work done.
If the answer is no, which it mostly is: I feel I save time and am more self-honest not connecting with them.
But as I get closer to 30 I feel less interest in connecting with others. The only exception is when I travel abroad and the surroundings are more intriguing.
On the other hand: Social media is a great marketing tool. I'm fine if people use Facebook however they choose. And I also agree with pruning boring content in favor of subscribing / liking manually.
Facebook has become something I absolutely can't stand. I have an account, but I very rarely even log in anymore. With ads, 'features stories', etc., the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. Just perusing the news feed has become a chore, not to mention the privacy concerns.
I'd be willing to pay a small subscription fee for a social network that respects my privacy, doesn't track everything I do, and doesn't constantly bombard me with crap. Problem is, I'm in the minority. People everywhere claim to care about privacy but they actually don't :)
I just use Facebook as a public directory, to find people and exchange email ID's/numbers so that I can message them on, say, WhatsApp.
I find it better than connecting with people though Facebook. Facebook chooses what I get to see and not see, and I really don't care about the "news" or the memes from pages my friends and family like.
As with a lot of other issues these days, it feels like that people forget there is usually a middle ground between the extremes. FB like any other tool can be a good or bad thing.
I spent a bit of time thinking about what I want to get out of Facebook.
- Social pulse - What are people talking about these days?
- Interesting/new content/new perspective/taking advantage of the echo chamber etc
- Keeping track of the very few physically-distant people that I care about
- Share some content that I think people would benefit from and wouldn't come across otherwise
- Buying/selling rarely in the marketplace
- Quick diary where I can store stuff that I found interesting
I took a few steps to get what I wanted out of the platform.
- Follow only the people that post content I might be interested in. It includes people that somewhat think like me and some that have very different opinions.
- Follow some of the content aggregation sites
- I only post content that is fit for public consumption except when I rarely share a photo of my kids/family
- Moved the FB app from the first screen to the last
How it has helped me.
- Cut down my usage by about 90%
- I am less concerned about privacy issues when it comes to FB as there isn't much on there that I wouldn't say out loud in public
- I kinda get a broad spectrum of how people are feeling about an issue
- More quality content than I used to get before. One of my favourite features on FB is "Save post". When I have a few minutes, I find stuff from my saved list or Pocket to read/watch.
- I see more photos of the people that I actually like rather than memes and quotes
I am pretty okay with how social media is involved in my life now.
There are different types of social interaction on Facebook between different generations, it seems. There are those who use it to keep up with other people and what they're doing, and then there's my generation (the 90s), where everyone tags each other in memes, and it isn't a very personal website.
Whereas there are points in this article that make sense, I don't really understand why they're singling out Facebook as toxic. For many, Facebook is just another feed and not necessarily for social media posts.
These anti Facebook and anti social media articles are so ubiquitous on hn now, that is starting to feel like a campaign. All too sudden, there is too many of them.
Several times a day, I spend 5-15 minutes writing a facebook post, and 9/10 times I don't post them. They all seem like too "look at me", or I think the person won't think it's funny or clever. It's a giant waste of time, but I feel better than if I post them(or less bad). Help?
I used to do the same thing over and over, wasting extraordinary amount of time trying to come up with something memetic and charming that would somehow make other people think better of me. I have never been able to pin down why, how or in what way had I wanted them to "think better of me", it was like I had been made to believe in some mandatory social currency that everyone else had and I lacked which could only be gained on Facebook. Also, I was a socially-awkward 17 year old at that time so add in the usual teenage insecurities and vulnerability too.
The only solution I came up with was to quit cold turkey. Fortunately, I also moved to a different city at the same time; so, it was easy psychologically to say good bye to all those connections. It's been more than 5 years and I haven't used Facebook or Twitter since.
It might not be easy for you to do depending on your circumstances and honestly, some times it does lead to trouble when people use Facebook to plan or announce things that I get left out of. I did manage to find a few like minded friends though who don't use it either, so usually it's not that bad.
If you are really serious about this, quitting is the only solution I know of that works.
[+] [-] rayiner|8 years ago|reply
What did people in my situation do before Facebook? My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person. They’d sit down in front of the TV after work. Their social lives were narrow, focused heavily on home life and the kids. That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
[+] [-] caterama|8 years ago|reply
a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* .
b) A solution that existed before Facebook were X-Mas cards. So, I think that's what I'll be doing when I no longer see my parents and close friends daily.
* On a side note, my mom calls my grandma for an hour or so weekly and they frequently talk about what they cooked and exchange recipes, but that's more personal than a Facebook/Instagram post.
[+] [-] fineline|8 years ago|reply
I'd even be tempted to speculate that those of us who aren't Facebook addicts are the ones who are able to socialise just fine without it, thank you very much, if it weren't for the fact that I know plenty of good-living, fun-loving Facebookers too.
[+] [-] badestrand|8 years ago|reply
* Yes, I know that I can set the target group but I never set it up and is too much work for just a small posting
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
I have a once close friend who moved out to Oregon from the east coast. I talk to him every two years when somebody dies at home. Knowing that his kid won the pinewood derby doesn’t give us anything more in common.
[+] [-] wutbrodo|8 years ago|reply
I got Facebook in 2006, when it was only college kids (and some high school kids), and my usage throughout college was 99% photo sharing and event planning. 10 years later, my usage of Facebook is......99% photo sharing, event planning, and messaging.
At no point did Facebook launch a feature that pointed a gun at your head and forced you to mindlessly scroll through your feed. Blaming the product/platform for people's unhealthy use of it is like blaming dessert or alcohol for existing: I avoid both of those things a lot more than most people do, but I also wouldn't want a world that completely lacked them.
[+] [-] jaredklewis|8 years ago|reply
I think a good metaphor is after you've broken up with someone, it can be healthier not to hold onto to a lot of photos, memorabilia, and so on associated with your ex. It's not that you are throwing your ex away; you're making room for a new person.
I've sometimes observed people are so caught up in the lives of old school friends, old colleagues, family and such that they don't have room for new, local relationships.
I think many people can use Facebook in a healthy way. The same can be said of alcohol, video games, reddit, and Internet news feeds. But, for many others, all of these can become damaging addictions. A lot depends on the individual at hand.
[+] [-] codingdave|8 years ago|reply
Sure, TV as a time waster also existed. And most people did spend some nights watching it. But it was not all night, every night. At least not for the majority of people.
[+] [-] gthtjtkt|8 years ago|reply
I dunno, maybe pick up the phone and have an actual conversation?
> My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person.
What the... what is this? It's like some bizarre propaganda written by Zuck himself.
> That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
Yeah, better to observe your friends from a distance like some kind of science project instead of having genuine interactions with them. Great improvement.
[+] [-] dynamoa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x4f3759df|8 years ago|reply
Your TV comment reminds me that one of the biggest shows was "Cheers" where you kinda get to feel like your hanging out with people your age.
[+] [-] herbst|8 years ago|reply
I think this is just biased on beeing used to the 'Facebook way' outside of this bubble your arguments just sound strange. (like why would I care what they cook or how their children look right now?)
[+] [-] OOPMan|8 years ago|reply
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the telephone
People in your situation before phones probably:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the mail/telegram
3) Didn't have that many remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel
People in your situation before telegrams/mail:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Didn't usually have any remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel and/or communications
I think if you will do some reading you'll discover that life proceeded quite handily prior to the availability of long distance communications and/or travel to the general populace.
[+] [-] freeflight|8 years ago|reply
Is it really tho? I'm not even conservative, I just think that there's certainly something to be said about a social life focused on the kids and home life, instead of replacing that with hollow attention seeking on Facebook.
What it's being replaced with? People who post pictures of their children, which to many is often the whole extent of the interaction with their kids; Just another prop to collect likes on FB.
I admit that's just my anecdotal personal experience from a really bad case, I still think it's a very relevant angle to this as many people do use Facebook as a form of escapism from reality.
[+] [-] PeOe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeemug|8 years ago|reply
This probably couldn't have happened without Facebook proper (now my parents are on WhatsApp), but I think mobile chat groups are a much better form-factor for the type of communication you want.
[+] [-] msiyer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nokidslol|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] folksinger|8 years ago|reply
That's what fentanyl and oxys are replacing, and it's a huge improvement.
[+] [-] naravara|8 years ago|reply
The frame of reference of TV might not be the right one. I think the counterfactual scenario is a better comparison point. We should consider what the internet and social media COULD have been had it not been monopolized by a handful of closed, ad-tech motivated platforms.
The internet before Facebook was still a social place that fostered connections between people. I made friends all over the world through UseNet, IRC, PHPBB forums, personal blogs like Xanga or MySpace, and other such platforms. But those weren't conducive to collecting data or serving advertising, so we they fell behind on investment, development, and market penetration.
Even Facebook didn't used to focus on a feed on informations shoved in your face, that was the ad platform they built on top of it. It used to be a collection of personal profile pages, essentially a mini-bio to look people up on. They had associated forum groups you could make/sign up for to socialize with individual groups of people. They've since turned those from conversational groups into "pages" that you subscribe to, better to have content pushed at you but less good at fostering conversation among people.
There are still good group-chatting platforms for actual friends to talk to each other. I keep in touch with my family around the world through WhatsApp (since colonized by Facebook natch). I maintain friendships with people from my MMO days through GroupMe. And I hear the kids today are all about Discord. These all facilitate more human-to-human interactions than platforms like Facebook or Instagram do, IMO.
Discussion forums maintain a persistent sense of identity for the participants so you interact foremost with a person and secondarily with whatever they happen to be saying at a given time on a given topic. Stuff like Facebook privileges content first, so the focus is on the message itself and secondarily on the person making it (good for marketing, bad for socializing).
Even discussion forums like HN or Reddit focus on content over identity. The old PHP forums had avatars and garish signatures and a whole bunch of other visual cues to give each speaker a distinct identity. Everything anyone said is strongly associated with an individual so you build up reputation and identity over time, which is essential for developing a form of community. Platforms like this make one person's comments indistinguishable from any other, so it becomes really hard to develop human connections with anyone.
You don't even need avatars and visual cues. IRC didn't have those, but what it did have was a requirement that someone had to BE IN THE ROOM to see what you're saying. So it's a vibe that's more like a conversation in a pub. You actually have to be aware of who is around and listening when you talk rather than screaming into a whirlwind of activity and seeing who replies. It's cozier. You're aware that you're talking specifically to a group of people that is around, which causes you to put yourself in their shoes when you talk rather than being all solipsistic.
And all of that is before we even get into the gross KPI-derived metrics (likes, shares, ratios, etc.) for evaluating our contributions that Facebook-style social media does which is a whole separate and disgusting thing.
<naravara has left the room>
[+] [-] walterstucco|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nether|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] surrey-fringe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|8 years ago|reply
Don't take this the wrong way, but push come to shove, HN falls into this low truly impactful life nutrition as well. This is not a critique. It's just that despite my semi-best attempts the signal to noice ratio remains suboptimal.
[+] [-] nickalekhine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matte_black|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skgoa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatimherefor|8 years ago|reply
I've seen this happen at three tech companies multiple times at each so I'm not willing to entertain the group of guys who I KNOW are going to comment on this and say "well not every guy is like that". True, but it only takes a few at every company to make a girl feel like a targeted object more than an employee.
Once the facebook search came out (way after I got rid of it) I was a manager managing about 25 guys in my tech firm and they used to use the facebook search to search by age, relationship status of all the females in the company constantly on the prowl.
Was so gross and terrifying and made me happy I didnt have one.
Another time about three years after college a guy I had never seen or met before came up to me at a restaurant and started blabbing on about my life, asking me if I was still dating that deuschbag from college and openly admitted who knew all of this from my facebook back in college and asked me what I was up to now. I mean wow, couldn't possible be more happy that people DON't know what I'm up to.
Not to mention old guys are creepy and use it to stare at all the bikini pics of their friends daughters.
I wish I could be ignorant and dumb enough to not know all this but unfortunately I work with a bunch of creepy men twice my age in tech for years now and they assume I don't notice these things.
If you are a girl in tech, youre better off not having a facebook, you honestly cannot even begin to fathom how many men are keeping tabs on you.
and here come the downvotes....
[+] [-] gkya|8 years ago|reply
I'm not a mod but I'll still say that this is frowned upon. Wrt the downvote itself, I promptly rewarded you with mine for your representing of stalking as a male only phenomenon. This blanket statements blaming men for everything really grosses me out and does not help at all with the feminist cause. Saying "hey you're all nasty pigs" is not persuasive at all, especially when I at the receiving end of the attack am not at all guilty of what you blame every single person with.
[+] [-] kerryfalk|8 years ago|reply
I responded rather abruptly and forcefully so that everyone within earshot could hear: "She's quite good at what she does."
[+] [-] matthewwiese|8 years ago|reply
I'm baffled that psych studies have to be referenced for people to see the obvious; and I'm certainly not on a higher plane of self-aware existence, either.
[+] [-] Top19|8 years ago|reply
It’s a built in community of people who are likely there because of ritual and tradition (am Catholic) and do not care about talking about startups or entrepreneurship (a breathtaking relief sometimes).
Church and religion has gotten a lot well-justified complaints over the years, but by liberal and moderately-conservative people abandoning it in droves, it only made it more conservative and dogmatic sadly.
Also if you think “hey I can’t go to church they don’t believe in XYZ” just know that something like 40%+ of priests believe that gay marriage is possibly within the church’s right to support (again citing Catholic stuff here), so there is a lot more support than you think but political change is hard and it’s harder if you stay home.
Also I will say that it’s almost “cool” to go to church now. It’s been, again for good reasons such as pointless cultural battles in the 90’s that American churches waged, cool to not do religious stuff but now it’s so passé. Whenever I see a person railing against religion on Reddit I can’t help but think they are exactly the person we could have used in the 1920s at the Snopes Trial, but otherwise their viewpoint is entirely unhelpful and conformist today.
[+] [-] Steeeve|8 years ago|reply
It is easy to make facebook bad, and that's a problem, but its a problem that all social sites have. If you go to a message board and that message board has frequent posters who pride themselves in stirring the pot to increase activity, it might be good short term, but long term its a poor habit for those posters and its a miserable experience for other users.
If you use facebook as an outlet for negativity you'll find that misery loves company. If you use facebook to interact with people in comments, but don't interact in real life it will turn hollow at some point.
I feel like there are two problems. First is that people prefer to vilify facebook than to offer solutions to whatever problem they are facing. Second is that there is no roadmap to steering one's own facebook experience into a positive one once it has gone south.
For instance... if in 2016 you were active in politics because of the election, it's likely that you still have a bunch of political discussion and news within your news feed and ads. And all of that is increasingly negative and polarizing as those businesses and interests try desperately to maintain your mindshare. If you want to get rid of it, there is no preference. You have to train it with your newfound lack of interest. You have to fix your own behavior, facebook doesn't have a way of fixing it for you.
The same kind of thing applies to real social interactions. If you isolated yourself into online-only interaction or online-centric interaction, you have to change. But how? Well, it's not that hard if you put thought into it, but few people actually put any thought into it.
I don't know what facebok or any platform can do to resolve this problem. Maybe there's a secondary niche market for online social coaching or profile fixing.
[+] [-] j_s|8 years ago|reply
"Junk food" is probably putting it nicely, many skip straight to comparing to one of various illicit drugs.
[+] [-] kenning|8 years ago|reply
When popular, a huge amount of the population used cigarettes despite growing research showing that it had a slight but consistent harmful effect. A hooked individual is unlikely to stop using even when given this evidence, as the product is addictive and gets stronger with network effects. Younger generations understood the harm better and had to avoid regular temptation to engage.
Comparisons to heroin are overblown. Nobody is losing their identity, money or life due to facebook. It's just a little bad and very addictive.
[+] [-] jackvalentine|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|8 years ago|reply
* It was free of advertisements
* Posts were fully encrypted so even facebook couldn't see read them
* You could create different user groups to post to* Everyone in a group had their own server side and/or local copy of all posts to that group
* You could unfriend or ignore users
* You could create filters by users or groups and keep them off your main "timeline" (also complex filters based on attributes like title, content, photos)
* You could delete your copy of posts but not other people's copy
* You could easily download all the data including posts and pictures any time you want
* You could easily set up internal or private "facebooks" on your own servers
* If you forget your password, there's no recovering anything.
* You don't need a separate app for private messaging
[+] [-] 7171u|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morpheuskafka|8 years ago|reply
I'm beginning to think the latter is intentional, just like scam email with copious misspellings.
[+] [-] splittingTimes|8 years ago|reply
- Dont use your real name, gender, nationality, etc. Just create a random identity.
- Dont post pictures, ask friends to not post pics of you. Remove all tags. NEVER EVER POST PICS OF YOUR KIDS.
- tailor your news feed: Aggressivly remove/unfollow people/groups that add only trivial noise and no interesting content. In doing so, I actually started to enjoy my thinned out feed.
- comb through your friend list once a year (I always do after New Years) and clean house. Some people collect friends like trophys and are proud of their 1254 contacts. Instead, do the opposite: Try to keep it as small as possible. Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact? Remove people that do not add value to your life.
- Dont use the messanger app. Turn off all notifications.
EDIT: Why jump through all these hoops? FB gives me a unique value. The trick is to fold all the virtual social network back into real life. This is especially useful when you are in multiple disjunct groups. Most of my social activities are organized through FB:
- arrange the next casual soccer kick
- see when is the next social dance and who is going
- friend organizes a christmas dinner party
- other friend goes to a science slam, I might join
- who wants to go bouldering this weekend?
- see this neat trick in the "Upcycling" group how to reuse an old ...
- oh, this old cafe in my borough is getting kicked out. Friends are organizing a solidarity march.
Since almost everybody is on it, organizing/getting this info would be so much harder without FB.
I also like to keep people in my feed that have a contrairian view point to mine. Keeps you sharp and sometimes you learn that your viewpoint might not have the best argument...
[+] [-] git-pull|8 years ago|reply
I do a different test. It's called "Do you care about me?"
If I got in a car crash over the weekend, would you even know? If you found out, would you visit me in the hospital?
If the answer is yes: but they're family, I already have their contact info. For non-family, that group fluctuates, and more often than not, it's zero. I'm fine with the number staying there. Benefits include: Less drama, breakups, regrets, and more time to get work done.
If the answer is no, which it mostly is: I feel I save time and am more self-honest not connecting with them.
But as I get closer to 30 I feel less interest in connecting with others. The only exception is when I travel abroad and the surroundings are more intriguing.
On the other hand: Social media is a great marketing tool. I'm fine if people use Facebook however they choose. And I also agree with pruning boring content in favor of subscribing / liking manually.
[+] [-] iregina|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcadam|8 years ago|reply
I'd be willing to pay a small subscription fee for a social network that respects my privacy, doesn't track everything I do, and doesn't constantly bombard me with crap. Problem is, I'm in the minority. People everywhere claim to care about privacy but they actually don't :)
[+] [-] lazycouchpotato|8 years ago|reply
I find it better than connecting with people though Facebook. Facebook chooses what I get to see and not see, and I really don't care about the "news" or the memes from pages my friends and family like.
[+] [-] sabmalik|8 years ago|reply
I spent a bit of time thinking about what I want to get out of Facebook.
- Social pulse - What are people talking about these days?
- Interesting/new content/new perspective/taking advantage of the echo chamber etc
- Keeping track of the very few physically-distant people that I care about
- Share some content that I think people would benefit from and wouldn't come across otherwise
- Buying/selling rarely in the marketplace
- Quick diary where I can store stuff that I found interesting
I took a few steps to get what I wanted out of the platform.
- Follow only the people that post content I might be interested in. It includes people that somewhat think like me and some that have very different opinions.
- Follow some of the content aggregation sites
- I only post content that is fit for public consumption except when I rarely share a photo of my kids/family
- Moved the FB app from the first screen to the last
How it has helped me.
- Cut down my usage by about 90%
- I am less concerned about privacy issues when it comes to FB as there isn't much on there that I wouldn't say out loud in public
- I kinda get a broad spectrum of how people are feeling about an issue
- More quality content than I used to get before. One of my favourite features on FB is "Save post". When I have a few minutes, I find stuff from my saved list or Pocket to read/watch.
- I see more photos of the people that I actually like rather than memes and quotes
I am pretty okay with how social media is involved in my life now.
[+] [-] indoobidablee|8 years ago|reply
Whereas there are points in this article that make sense, I don't really understand why they're singling out Facebook as toxic. For many, Facebook is just another feed and not necessarily for social media posts.
[+] [-] watwut|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danschumann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onboardram|8 years ago|reply
The only solution I came up with was to quit cold turkey. Fortunately, I also moved to a different city at the same time; so, it was easy psychologically to say good bye to all those connections. It's been more than 5 years and I haven't used Facebook or Twitter since.
It might not be easy for you to do depending on your circumstances and honestly, some times it does lead to trouble when people use Facebook to plan or announce things that I get left out of. I did manage to find a few like minded friends though who don't use it either, so usually it's not that bad.
If you are really serious about this, quitting is the only solution I know of that works.