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What should you think about when using Facebook?

veekaybee.github.io

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Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#23
post #19

A related question is "Should you sign up for Facebook today?". Five years ago I killed my Facebook account (and LinkedIn and G+) and it hasn't bothered me, but... am I missing out on something?

I log into Facebook once a year or so. Twitter, never. HN and Reddit I enjoy. Am 30. Don't feel bad.

I don't feel bad, I'm just curious what I'm missing out on by not taking part in something that's very popular. I love Twitter.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#24
post #5

I think about it as a simple Message and Event's calendar that my friends have access to me once per week when I look at it. Also occasionally use it as a login systems for sites I don't want to sign up to. What else does it do? I unfollowed everyone/thing from my wall ... which seems to improve it somewhat!

I still use Messenger, but my Facebook account is deactivated. I finally gave up after clicking "Hide all from..." for the 10,000th time. It seemed like an increasingly losing battle. The more I unfollowed, the more it showed me things I didn't want to see, and more ads! My entire interaction had devolved into scrolling slowing and clicking "Hide all..." So tell me how you got your feed to stop being full of bad thin…

I just did about 25 per day for what seemed like forever but I wasn't about to let it win!

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#25
My take. I have been using FB since 2007 I was a sophomore in high school. A couple years ago I didn't use FB as often as I did, but just this past year I started to use FB more frequently.

The change has to do with the people I actually network with on FB. I always have friends, real life friends on my FB, but most of them aren't very active on Facebook. This past year I met a bunch of new friends and they are the social bunch. I started to post more of my social life on Facebook. It's been fun to actually see what's happening in everyone's life. With the recent political shit storm in America, FB is becoming more active.

I also started to follow a bunch of pages ranging from food to inspiration quotes to news page. They have been helpful to get me through my day, learning new perspectives and finding more interesting things.

I've used other products such as quora, flipboard, etc but they don't provide the same conveniences as FB does. I have family members actively on FB (my father and my sister in particular), and I enjoy sharing my moments with them.

I know there's a lot of privacy concerns with using FB but I simply try to accommodate it. I believe in controlling my privacy but I also enjoy using the product. As far as I am concerned, if I am not leaking my social security number or talking shit about my work on FB, I am not too concerned.

But in the future when I become a parent, I would certainly be concerned of the safety and the privacy more and more, specifically how it is easy for someone to look at another person's profile for as long as the profile is shared with friends and friends. Fake news and the left/right war on Facebook are also quite problematic.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#26
post #16
post #2

Start using other apps with better privacy for communication. Get a real website or blog for your PR needs.

>Get a real website or blog for your PR needs. Btw if you weren't already aware... a lot of small businesses (e.g. mom & pop restaurants, handymen contractors, yoga studios, etc) actually did have a real website but they abandoned them and only maintained their Facebook pages. The behavior pattern is the same: the "real website" whether it was a CMS built on PHP-Drupal or a Wordpress blog was too complicated for owne…

The original post was more directed at the individual human FB member.

One problem with FB sites for businesses is loss if identity since the platform looks the same.

I get that small physical shops that don't want to pay for a webmaster etc may have problems updating their sites. But I do miss seeing their original sites.

Twitter and Instagram are ok channels. The problem with FB is the privacy of its individual real person members and their families and friends. When did we sign up to get directed ads etc?

Zuckerberg probably had that idea early on, but the FB members had to accept new terms several times to continue using the platform.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#29
post #21

Can someone make a browser plugin that will send fake data to facebook? Instead of hiding your own behavior, might as well poison their database.

A few of us were joking about poisoning the location tracking database of site along a similar vein. Have an app masking your location to some place in the pacific ocean to any app running in the background asking for location (without the user's intent of using it).

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#30
post #16
post #2

Start using other apps with better privacy for communication. Get a real website or blog for your PR needs.

>Get a real website or blog for your PR needs. Btw if you weren't already aware... a lot of small businesses (e.g. mom & pop restaurants, handymen contractors, yoga studios, etc) actually did have a real website but they abandoned them and only maintained their Facebook pages. The behavior pattern is the same: the "real website" whether it was a CMS built on PHP-Drupal or a Wordpress blog was too complicated for owne…

>> businesses don't care -- it's their public storefront.

Until they land in the news for something and then people can go back and start digging up and doxxing people at the company and any other nefarious information they can get their hands on. ANY information on a business FB page is like a gold mine for social engineers. Everybody on FB eventually "over shares" information they think is safe, but its really not.

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