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Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

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Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#41

Post by anactofgod »

I don't know why I would. I decided early on that I wouldn't use any of their apps, play any of their games, and actually introduce disinformation into the medium from time to time. (I went to the "Barnum and Bailey Clown College", "The School of Hard Knocks" and "How High". No really! I did!)

I view FaceBook as being purely frivolous, for casual interaction w friends & acquaintances, and treat it thus. There are other "social networking" sites (for instance, LinkedIn) for other types of (real/purposeful) networking.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#42

Post by Asa-Nisse »

ivenkys wrote: post #30

I never went in - i still don't understand the point of FB or others of their ilk. If i really want to keep in touch with far-flung family, friends - i pick up the phone or drop an email. If they are important to me i will make the effort. I also don't find the need to advertise on a daily/hourly basis what i am doing or tell people about the cool car/bike/tv/ipod etc. i bought. May be its just not for people like me…

I too was a FB-absente for a long time, but a friend of mine (non techie) explained its usefulness to me in a very good way.

"It lets you keep updated on what your aquintances does on a daily basis". Not your good friends (because you call them). Not your collegagues (because you chat/mail them). But all those highschool and childhood friends you dont see on a day-day basis because they're in another country/region/world/whatever.

Now, I could argue that that information is quite, uninteresting, and in many ways, it is. It is however quite nice to know that if I want to reach those people, I can.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#43

Post by steveklabnik »

jkincaid wrote: post #38
steveklabnik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're conflating privacy with exclusivity. Facebook was originally only for those in college because it was an electronic version of a book that was put out by Zuck's college. Secondly, I don't think that Facebook's privacy controls were ever a big selling point. The fact that it was for cool kids combined with the fact that all of your friends were on it was a huge selling point. Yes, people use the privacy…

"Yes, people use the privacy controls, but never the fine grained stuff, it's all "don't show info to people that aren't my friends." Exactly. People didn't care much about the granular stuff, just that only their friends could see what they were posting. With the changes FB has made to its settings (namely, the 'Everyone' setting that is now the default), that's no longer true. For what it's worth, I was in the exac…

As I said to someone below, though, it's not surprising that Facebook makes everything public by default. Facebook is highly incentivized to get people sharing with each other, and the more public things are, the better it is for them. I'm not sure what the answer is to this, if it needs answering. It's possible that the privacy people are in the minority.

That's another thing, though; we've both really only got data from our own anecdotal experiences and interpretation of our friends' descriptions of what makes Facebook valuable to them. Who knows, maybe we're both outliers, and the vast majority of Facebook's users use their ACL based system heavily.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#45

Post by gte910h »

kevintwohy wrote: post #25

I think the 'don't put anything you want kept private on the internet' is, generally, a good argument. I will say though, that I do think Facebook encouraged a reasonable expectation that certain data would be 'private,' and that's since changed.

I honestly hate I can be tagged in photographs and cannot turn this off.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#46

Post by davi »

gcr wrote: post #37
davi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: I want ACLs meet Web. I want to publish personal stuff to close friends & family, professional stuff to colleagues, and random miscellany to the world, all via the same tool. I want to be able to customize the layout of my content depending on the audience. 2: I want this without my friends and family having to learn about OpenID or having to sign up for a new account somewhere. (I don't know how to do this, I am…

You are describing the Internet. Self-run web sites, blogs, and instant messaging systems: 1. allow you to fine-tune who sees what, 2. do not require extra accounts (save comment systems, etc.), 3. are not tied to any one provider or company and thus will last for a long time.

How do you see the internet providing built-in ACLs? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list

Even if it did, your assertion is like equating assembly to a high level language. Just because you theoretically can do anything in assembly that you can in a high level language doesn't mean you would want to. I am trying to specify a set of attributes for a non-existent tool that would let me more fluidly publish what I write and create.

----

edit: if anybody reading this would care to explain why I am getting downvoted & the parent is getting upvoted so much, I would appreciate it.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#48

Post by jseifer »

cj wrote: post #21

I honestly don't care. People shouldn't have private conversations or implicating pictures on Facebook, period. If you don't do either of those two things, you'll be fine. No need to dramatically or publicly terminate your account.

Devil's advocate: If you have a facebook account you really can't stop people from tagging you in "implicating pictures" and the like. You can un-tag yourself after the face or delete things on your wall but there's no guarantee you'll get to that before someone else sees it.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#49

Post by nose »

steveklabnik wrote: post #29
maxwin wrote: post #20

We need a decentralized social graph. I should host and own my data not facebook or any other organization. Maybe browsers should innovate and solve this problem.

You'd probably like OpenLike: http://openlike.org/ or OpenSocial: http://www.opensocial.org/ Not that OpenSocial took off or anything. And I'm not that confident in OpenLike, either.

opensocial isn't doing too bad. It is supported by Yahoo, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many more networks.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#50

Post by nostrademons »

steveklabnik wrote: post #35
jkincaid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't feel that Facebook told anyone that their data would be private. Maybe I'm just naïve, or a little bit of an exhibitionist." This was actually how Facebook got popular in the first place. The whole point was that it was more private than the other social networks out there. As the site grew, one of its big selling points was its privacy control panel, which gave you granular control over how your content was…

I think you're conflating privacy with exclusivity. Facebook was originally only for those in college because it was an electronic version of a book that was put out by Zuck's college. Secondly, I don't think that Facebook's privacy controls were ever a big selling point. The fact that it was for cool kids combined with the fact that all of your friends were on it was a huge selling point. Yes, people use the privacy…

Well, the "it's for cool kids" selling point took a big hit when they started letting high schoolers on it, and lost all credibility when I started getting friend requests from senior citizens and friends' parents.

And most of my friends don't actively use it, though most of us at least have a FaceBook account. I find that I'm getting bombarded by sheep from weak connections that aren't really doing anything with their lives, while most of the people that I actually care about, I either see in person or they have busy lives and don't spend much time on FaceBook either.

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