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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

#91

Post by jessaustin »

Spooky23 wrote: post #26
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…

Just sign out. Facebook's response is hilarious -- they send you "please come back" emails for a few weeks. I stopped using it a few months ago, don't really miss it at all. If you find you're missing someone whom you normally interacted with on Facebook, give them a call.

Yeah those messages are hilarious. I got a pathetic new wrinkle on that the other day:

It looks like someone tried to log into your account on April XX at X:XXxm using an unknown device. Your account is safe; we just wanted to make sure it was you who tried to log in from somewhere new.

If you don't think this was you, please log into Facebook so we can walk you through a few steps to keep your account safe.

Haha nice try Zuck!

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#92

Post by lucb1e »

philovivero wrote: post #42
lucb1e wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook: Not really. If you feel no peer pressure to sign up, great! For me, I was missing out on events when classmates and even teachers started communicating via Facebook. These days it has died down again in favor of Telegram so I could technically deactivate the account, but I'm keeping it for convenience. Recently saw someone's wedding being announced there, not something I want to be missing out on. I'd have…

Can you go into a little more detail about Telegram? I find the whole tech platform very promising, and I have a group chat and a couple private chats going on it, but at least in my social circle, we haven't transitioned. Do you do event invites with it? Do you do family group chats with it? Just wondering.

The killer feature for developers is just proper desktop support. Another killer feature for security- and privacy-conscious people is that the clients are open source. People also seem to like the stickers, but they're not my thing.

Anyway, people in my vicinity usually get their healthy dose of paranoia through me so sooner or later, they typically end up installing Telegram. It's not perfect, I have a wishlist, but it's a far cry better from Whatsapp privacy-wise and client-wise (and sticker-wise if that's your thing).

Sometimes it takes a little pushing and inflicting logic (why should I install technically inferior Whatsapp for you, but you not technically superior Telegram for me?), but most people get around to it. Those who don't, I usually just end up losing contact with -- and so far I have no regrets about losing contact with anyone.

> Do you do event invites with it?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with "event" invites, but whenever a group needs making (e.g. for project groups), I create it in Telegram and invite everyone that already has it. Sometimes there are one or two people who still need to install it, sometimes grudgingly, but if they have at least a few friends on it, they usually don't go back to Whatsapp anymore afterwards. (They don't switch exclusively, but they'll use both.)

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#93

Post by lucb1e »

u_me_him wrote: post #28
lucb1e wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook: Not really. If you feel no peer pressure to sign up, great! For me, I was missing out on events when classmates and even teachers started communicating via Facebook. These days it has died down again in favor of Telegram so I could technically deactivate the account, but I'm keeping it for convenience. Recently saw someone's wedding being announced there, not something I want to be missing out on. I'd have…

But without a formal invitation how can you just show up? I doubt the formal invitation would require facebook.

I'm sorry, what invitation are you talking about? The Facebook event system?

If so, if someone wants to invite me, I'm sure they can find a way around Mark Zuckerberg to do this. If not, their loss. I'm not a party person though, that might have something to do with it as well. (I do get around to my share of hacker conferences, but they somehow don't seem to use Facebook...)

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#94

Post by tdkl »

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 feel confident that Facebook has stumbled on something in our animal behavior that draws us closer to it.

It's a "novelty addiction". They weren't the first, it's just its content is closer and more relevant to you since it's people you know. The feeling when you find something new gives you a pleasurable dopamine hit, so you're constantly looking for more.

Same can be said for people addicted to reddit, HN, Twitter, etc.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#95

Post by Jaruzel »

cbeach wrote: post #68
Jaruzel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fa…

Your post sounds a bit like "all the kids are in the playground, but I don't like it, so I sit on my own in the library. The playground sucks and all the other kids are wrong"

If that's your only takeaway from my post, that's fine. Having said that, you have literally just described my school years...

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#96

Post by rokhayakebe »

xlayn wrote: post #20

Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet... of course that depends on your use of the internet. I have a profile but it's been closed for years. For me the internet are forums that provide some technical insight that helps me fix a problem, open source software and a way to buy something without getting out of my chair. On the plus side, facebook took away from email a lot of non requested emails and that m…

Some of the reasons Facebook took away from email are UI/UX-based: 1) have you ever wanted to send just a message without a subject line (email forces you to stop and think for 2 seconds, which is not good), 2) you have to remember the person's email address or how it starts (emails are still not great at just entering the person's name), 3) if the person changes email address you have to know the new one or your mail goes undelivered.

FB gave these folks email without all the above extra and folders, tags, and all that other non sense.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#97

Post by patrickdavey »

reitanqild wrote: post #56
Tenhundfeld wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 [1] - closest I got to this was downloading profile images from meetup.com for a meetup I ran to help me put names to faces. I then created a series of Anki flash cards. I'm still terrible at it though ;)

I do agree it'd be a useful app.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#98

Post by ZenoArrow »

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 wish I had a clever idea for a solution to this because I really think the world deserves an open social platform that not only engages people socially, but provides the social lubricant to enable people to form online/offline clubs and interact with each other in a high-bandwidth so we can use the internet to teach each other and create fun things with each other."

So like Meetup but with a stronger online discussion platform?

http://www.meetup.com/

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#99

Post by PavlovsCat »

cbeach wrote: post #88
PavlovsCat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is a long-term store of searchable data, just not for the people who actually put it there or care what their friends said or did. But more to your point: so it doesn't break a completely meaningless promise such as this one: > Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to…

You have an incredible sense of entitlement when it comes to a website that is provided free of charge (with fairly well-targeted and unobtrusive advertising) for you and your friends to use. If you think the site is not sophisticated enough for your tastes, don't use it. But if you don't use it and your friends do, then you may miss out on social connection. Because that's what the site is for. Facebook gives a lot…

> But if you don't use it and your friends do, then you may miss out on social connection.

Which makes the whole "free of charge and voluntary" thing kind of moot. If it sucks up people, it better not suck, or at least connect with things like diaspora etc. (which also lack these features, but at least wouldn't fight you tooth and nail if you tried to implement them). If that is incredibly entitled, well, I guess I am then.

> The complexity of building a site that serves 1.5bn users is astonishing

As for me is the desire to even do that. I think true genius is found in protocols, not applications and silos. The internet was invented to withstand nuclear strikes, and the return to centralization seems to be solely for the purpose of spooks shoveling eyeballs into the jaws of advertisers. I can't admire the technical proficiency if I disagree with the spirit and goal of it so deeply.

Re: Facebook is slowly eating the rest of the Internet

#100

Post by bowlich »

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.

I spent two months trying to control what the facebook feed would give me.

I wanted only posts by my friends. Photos of my friends. Videos of my friends. No third-party posts. No news posts. No ads masquerading as content. No clickbait. No stupid memes. Only news about the lives of my friends.

Every morning I would open my feed and go through every post on the top page that was a "shared" post and tell Facebook to never display content from that site again. I probably blocked hundreds of sites and yet every morning my feed would still be full of idiotic shared news articles. I blocked all my pages and I really only have a small number of friends and relatives added to the site (less than a hundred).

I have yet to find a tool where Facebook actually shows me what is blocked and allows me to define what I want (no shared content, only first-party posts by friends). I still saw a lot of blocked site's content pop up the next day even after blocking it the day prior, so I highly suspect the "block this content" option is taken as a suggestion and not a hard demand.

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