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What should you think about when using Facebook?

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Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#131

Post by eikenberry »

djrogers wrote: post #114
aantix wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange; I've done the opposite. I engage with Facebook now more than ever. I'm 38 years old. I plan events with friends, I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent.. There's never been a platform so emotionally engaging. It makes me feel in sync with their lives, even when I haven't seen them in a while. It's such an amazing platform.

> I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent.. Do you though? I mean do you really get to see all those things? Having been through the loss of a parent and the arrival a new baby in the past couple of years I can tell you from this end of things there is no value in any online "presence" of friends and family. The people who come to meet our new baby, who brought food, and wh…

Apples and Oranges. Do you live 1000s of miles away from friends and family so that your baseline is never seeing the people rather than seeing them in person. If you are starting from the former and building up the ways to stay in touch a platform like Facebook can be a nice tool. Modern communications tools make living away from Family much better than anytime in history with email, unmetered long distance phone, video conferencing, chat, sites like facebook, etc.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#132

Post by aantix »

djrogers wrote: post #114
aantix wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange; I've done the opposite. I engage with Facebook now more than ever. I'm 38 years old. I plan events with friends, I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent.. There's never been a platform so emotionally engaging. It makes me feel in sync with their lives, even when I haven't seen them in a while. It's such an amazing platform.

> I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent.. Do you though? I mean do you really get to see all those things? Having been through the loss of a parent and the arrival a new baby in the past couple of years I can tell you from this end of things there is no value in any online "presence" of friends and family. The people who come to meet our new baby, who brought food, and wh…

So after the death of a parent, an old, close childhood friend that lives far away sends you a message saying "your mom was a second mother to me" and it means nothing...?

It means something to me. So I continue to use the service.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#133

Post by rhizome »

aantix wrote: post #98
treehau5 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Facebook is the ultimate realization of the American concept of "friendship" (maybe not your specific case) contrasted to the German version of friendship. In Germany, to call someone your friend, it is a great honor, it means something, it is an investment. Here in the states, "everyone is friends!" Yet it feels so superficial. Now we can just check in on them a couple times a day on their posts without the…

Strength of friendships in Germany can't be granular? Aren't there just people that have been good to you in the present or past, that you want to see succeed, that you want to root for? Those are the perfect candidates for Facebook.

Acquaintances? FOAFs? Former colleagues? A DJ you used to go see 20 years ago? In the US, all of these people get swept under the rug of "friends" in the FB era, and it's in this way that they are less granular if "friend" can mean just about anybody you've ever come across.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#135

Post by olkid »

anondon wrote: post #36

Genuine question : do you think a privacy oriented social network where users pay a small annual fee (around $5) would work? Think Whatsapp (use phone number as an id, no native discovery, only connect through phone contacts, encrypted user data only to prevent database leaks from causing damage) + Facebook (feed like feature, share photos, videos, direct messaging, group messaging). No user tracking, no ads, just a…

I believe there is room for a private social network that is peer-to-peer, encrypted, with no central servers and an open spec. It would make my world a better place, but I don't think it can be monetized. (Maybe donations? non-profit?) Also, privacy breaks down when you run a client on Windows 8 or above. :-( I think a lot of tough computer science challenges are inherit in this model. And yes, there is the network effect dilemma, but I don't require mainstream adoption to use it.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#136

Post by rhizome »

nnd wrote: post #11

Even though Facebook by itself doesn't seem to provide much value anymore, it's incredible how much of a platform lock-in the have. For example, Facebook login becoming essentially a universal identity provider. The worst thing is even when you create a new account under a different name they still manage to track you down, and start suggesting adding friends from the old account. I wonder how they do this, by tracki…

Can't use Tinder after you disable your FB account.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#137

Post by pound »

cJ0th wrote: post #79

The funny thing is, these are exactly the things I think about while on facebook. By being online for almost two decades I've developed a 6th sense for sketchy services and the whole UI of Facebook screams "SCAM!". The periodically reoccurring messages harassing you into uploading a picture of yourself, the prompt to denounce people who you believe are using a fake name or the vaguely described privacy settings don't…

I deleted facebook app from phone (android) and occasionally was visiting facebook website after notifications received. And apparently you cannot neither read nor reply to messages via browser anymore, you asked to install messenger app and it's not a "BETTER EXPERIENCE VIA APP (thank you, continue to site)" type of modal, there is no tiny text option to proceed with web

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#138

Post by tormeh »

oblio wrote: post #127
tormeh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generalizing something fierce here, but generally speaking, friendship in Germanic countries is highly non-linear. Either you're friends or you're not. My theory is that it's about geographical mobility. When people move around a lot a sliding scale of friendship makes sense. When you and everyone around you are mostly stationary you know who you want to spend time with and everyone else is just noise. Doesn't re…

The Irish aren't Germanic. There's your explanation.

Well, there's nothing magic about Germanicness. If the Irish move about as much as Germans, then that can't be the (sole) explanation for the difference in niceness to strangers.

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#139

Post by dragonwriter »

pound wrote: post #137
cJ0th wrote: post #79

The funny thing is, these are exactly the things I think about while on facebook. By being online for almost two decades I've developed a 6th sense for sketchy services and the whole UI of Facebook screams "SCAM!". The periodically reoccurring messages harassing you into uploading a picture of yourself, the prompt to denounce people who you believe are using a fake name or the vaguely described privacy settings don't…

I deleted facebook app from phone (android) and occasionally was visiting facebook website after notifications received. And apparently you cannot neither read nor reply to messages via browser anymore, you asked to install messenger app and it's not a "BETTER EXPERIENCE VIA APP (thank you, continue to site)" type of modal, there is no tiny text option to proceed with web

> And apparently you cannot neither read nor reply to messages via browser anymore

You can, but they try to make mobile users think you can't; you have to either use the desktop version of messenger.com (e.g., with "request desktop version" from a mobile browser) or use mbasic.facebook.com

Re: What should you think about when using Facebook?

#140

Post by germinalphrase »

Not long ago I was sitting with some long time friends I hadn't seen in a few years. It was one of those really great visits in which you remember exactly why someone is an important person in your life.

One of the things we ended up talking about was physical photographs and how our families had developed a natural curation and annotation system. "Keepers" get sorted and labeled on the back with names, dates, brief notes, etc. and placed in albums. There were a bore when we were younger, but now we appreciate having some long-lasting artifacts of our families' lives and history. This is a nice thing and differs in importance to my every day interaction with personal media.

If I had the talent, I would make a small journaling tool for myself. All I would ask it to do is remind me once a week to select a favorite photograph and make a brief note about who's in it and why it's important. Really, just 30 second a week. Then, one a year a nice, archivally printed photo album would show up on my doorstep with all of these photographs arranged and discretely tagged with names, dates, and notes. That's it.

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