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Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

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Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#51

Post by vonklaus »

Retric wrote: post #6
steego wrote: post #3

I'm really ashamed to admit it, but I am addicted to Facebook. As much as I despise the lack of depth in the average content, I feel confident that Facebook has stumbled on something in our animal behavior that draws us closer to it. I've always explained the phenomenon of gossip rags as a surrogate for our innate need to be social. Rather than engaging in actual social scenarios (which can carry social risks), many…

Facebook has a large disincentive to connecting people in the real world. If you're at a watching movies, camping in the woods, or just hanging out then you're not online. Worse, the more you connect in the real world the less interesting passive browsing becomes. Sure, you can still use FB to IM, but that's far less profitable for them. ...

While you are correct, and on the face of it i would agree because I am cynical, they can never really lose that battle. I doubt a normal Facebook user can ever be in the same place as all of their Facebook friends. So family, college friends, high school friends, etc, will always be accessible online at the expense of the other parties real life presence.

Based on eating out, I can say that groups of people still use their phones to connect to Facebook, even with large groups of "Friends" IRL.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#52

Post by pdkl95 »

alaaf wrote: post #32

# Hostfile 127.0.0.1 localhost facebook.com www.facebook.com Best decision ever.

    # if you're bothering with a hostfile block, you probably want these
    fbcdn.com www.fbcdn.com fbcdn.net www.fbcdn.net
    www.static.ak.fbcdn.net static.ak.fbcdn.net
    facebook.com www.facebook.com connect.facebook.com
    login.facebook.com www.login.facebook.com
    www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com static.ak.connect.facebook.com
    www.static.ak.facebook.com static.ak.facebook.com 

    # might want to add these as well
    google-analytics.com www.google-analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#53

Post by Chathamization »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #16
cm3 wrote: post #5

I've never used Facebook or LinkedIn and I'm someone who doesn't feel the urge to sign up. Should I be concerned?

I am "on Facebook", but it's for four specific reasons: 1) So I don't get questions about why I'm not on Facebook. 2) To let friends tag me in pictures (and see what pictures are being posted of me). 3) To let friends invite me to parties through Facebook. 4) See pictures of friends' babies. I think it's good to have a Facebook account. It lets people push stuff to you, and more often I'm seeing invitations coming ex…

I'm on it, but still get asked all the time why I'm not on it. It seems like if you're not posting and commenting all the time people forget you exist.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#54

Post by mxuribe »

SonicSoul wrote: post #24
cbeach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can control what you see from individual people and what things they share. It's very granular and it works well. You can also follow really interesting people, pages and groups. It's all about using the tool properly.

I find following interesting people on twitter to be a better signal to noise ratio. That way I get exactly what they put out and nothing more, instead of some complicated algorithm designed to keep me "engaged".

I agree, i do like Twitter just a slight tad more...but I wonder: if a person is following someone on Twitter, do they see all of the actual output from that person? Or does Twitter do something similar to Facebook, and limit things a bit? If not now, then I wonder if it will happen eventually (Twitter's gotta monetize somehow, someday)? I should have began my comment with the disclaimer that I am becoming more and more of a curmudgeon of being a user on someone else's platform. Doubtful I'll get to RMS levels, but def. I'm a curmudgeon. ;-)

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#55

Post by amelius »

blowski wrote: post #4

I wonder if and at what point competition authorities will start requiring Facebook to make these options available with accounts on other social networks. Otherwise, we end up in the same place as Internet Explorer killing Netscape on Windows - a company releasing technically inferior products that squash competition by using their strengths in other irrelevant areas. I can use Whatsapp and Instagram without a Faceb…

I guess in theory they should already be required by the telecommunications act of 1996 [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#56

Post by reitanqild »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #10
steego wrote: post #3

I'm really ashamed to admit it, but I am addicted to Facebook. As much as I despise the lack of depth in the average content, I feel confident that Facebook has stumbled on something in our animal behavior that draws us closer to it. I've always explained the phenomenon of gossip rags as a surrogate for our innate need to be social. Rather than engaging in actual social scenarios (which can carry social risks), many…

I go through an experience about once a year: 1) Log in to Facebook to look at picture of friend's new baby. This is nice. 2) Start browsing around, seeing what other friends have been up to. Oh neato. ... an hour later 3) Looking up people I knew in high school but haven't kept up with. ... another hour later 4) Holy crap, where'd the morning go? I can't do this. Shut it down. 5) Wait ~12 months for next event that…

I try to use facebook more [0][1] but I just find it boring compared to family, work, friends and HN.

[0]: I really struggle with faces and figured Facebook would be perfect for practicing.

[1]: If anyone knows if someone has made a game out of names and faces on the social graph I'd be interested. If not gøfeel free to steal that idea.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#57

Post by luxpir »

manmal wrote: post #44
luxpir wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another issue I've found since leaving the 'Facebook family' a few years back; there's a large disincentive for members you leave behind to contact you. You fall out of their habitual communication methods. The onus is on you to call them, which is already hard enough when both people could initiate the call. It becomes a much rarer event unless concerted effort is made. So until 'the next big social thing' comes alo…

A friend of mine returned to FB a few days ago, claiming that he had lost like 90% of his social contact. That sounds a bit much to me, bur one should definitely take this into consideration before leaving.

And how sad is that?

That a person's social activity should be dictated by a single website, in this world of ubiquitous social media, portable phones with hours of pre-paid talk-time... The effect may be more pronounced in the generation who've grown up solely on social media, but it certainly exists as a phenomenon.

Whether the 'social contact' referred to by your friend is genuine in-person social contact or vague 'online contact' will probably depend on their age.

Us pre-80s/90s kids had phonecalls, 'knocking on the person's door to see if they were in', postcards and 'meeting at the usual spot at the usual time' social habits. Now a lazy click to 'like' something posted to boost the poster's ego counts as socialising. That would be fine if we actually met up and spoke from time to time but that sadly is not the case.

I thought at one point the younger generation had started to push back against screentime, but I seem to have been mistaken for the moment. Perhaps in another few years, with a bit of luck.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#58

Post by PavlovsCat »

cbeach wrote: post #17
SonicSoul wrote: post #14

ever since i enabled 2 factor i'm too lazy to log in so that did the trick. When I do log in once in a while, it just looks like a tumblr feed of people posting funny videos with occasional personal photo, I can get that on reddit already. so i'm just keeping my account alive in case i have anything to announce in the future..

You can control what you see from individual people and what things they share. It's very granular and it works well. You can also follow really interesting people, pages and groups. It's all about using the tool properly.

Tool? It all just gets thrown into one page, either chronologically (a setting FB constantly "forgets") or filtered through a totally opaque algorithm. There is no way to display things in various ways, e.g. as list (just the date, type (text/link/image/video), poster, number of likes/comments/shares). There is no way to show posts matching specific criteria, be it the date range or content. There is just the endless scrolling nonsense. Anything I ever posted on my own CMS I can find in like 10 seconds if I remember any detail about it. On Facebook, unless it was last week, why bother? The stuff effectively disappears for normal human use, and is only really remembered by the algorithms and spooks that peruse the data.

So it's not even trying to be a tool as far as I can see. It's certainly not about people posting and curating things, it's just about posting and seeing whatever random stuff some random person or group currently posted. The same for groups: the way they are, they're as bad as no forum ever was, even in the 90s. Which I would say about a lot of sites with comment functions, e.g. YouTube and Twitter, but that doesn't improve FB.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#60

Post by Jaruzel »

luxpir wrote: post #30
Retric wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has a large disincentive to connecting people in the real world. If you're at a watching movies, camping in the woods, or just hanging out then you're not online. Worse, the more you connect in the real world the less interesting passive browsing becomes. Sure, you can still use FB to IM, but that's far less profitable for them. ...

Another issue I've found since leaving the 'Facebook family' a few years back; there's a large disincentive for members you leave behind to contact you. You fall out of their habitual communication methods. The onus is on you to call them, which is already hard enough when both people could initiate the call. It becomes a much rarer event unless concerted effort is made. So until 'the next big social thing' comes alo…

I left FB (several times in fact), and I always end up returning. Firstly no-one cares you've gone - most of your 'friends' don't even notice you don't post or comment any more. Secondly, no-one contacts you directly either. You end up a social outcast, missing events that only get posted on Facebook. I didn't know some of my friends had had babies until several weeks after the fact, because they only announced on Facebook assuming everyone would see it, and I was on a Facebook hiatus at the time.

The most damning thing about the Facebook plague is that it's causing most of it's users to completely forget that other means of communication exists. The friction to send an email to, or god-forbid actually call, your non-Facebook friends is now simply too high that most people no longer do it. Email is now just a place where all those unread eBay and Amazon receipt notifications go.

Personally, I know I can walk away from FB any time I choose, however right now the cost of the social disconnect is too high.

Maybe the answer is to just accept we have no real friends any more, and just log out.

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