Get your loved ones off Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#301

Post by ionised » Wed, May 24, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #139

stevewillows wrote: post #129

A good number of people I know have left facebook for everything but the events. Its still the one central location where pretty much everybody is. I would love nothing more than a standalone events app that not only had future events, but a, 'hey, I'm at %location%, anyone want to meet up?' that allowed for multiple degrees of social interaction --- e.g. just friends, anybody.

This is the primary reason I use it. It annoys my girlfriend (who posts regularly) that I don't read what she posts (sometimes I do, but that leads to a time sink when I see everything else I've "got" to read). 99% of my use is to post event announcements, and respond to event invites from friends. If I could trust people to properly respond to emailed invites, I would, but most people I know have 1k+ unread emails.…

> It annoys my girlfriend (who posts regularly) that I don't read what she posts (sometimes I do, but that leads to a time sink when I see everything else I've "got" to read).

This sounds batshit crazy to me.

Honestly if my partner expected that of me and used it as a reason to be upset with me I'd be thinking of ending the relationship.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#302

Post by haggy » Wed, May 24, 2017, 11:44 AM UTC

benchaney wrote: post #234

haggy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing. What you call an "extremist attitude" I call "info security common sense". Companies like Facebook are well known to lull their users into a false sense of b…

Please. Everyone who has their entire life on Facebook put it there voluntarily. You are completely ignoring the people who put and small amount of information on Facebook and retain a large amount of privacy. And despite your not so subtle implication that you are smarter than anyone who disagrees with you, you have completely failed to defend your premise that using Facebook is fundamentally incompatible with priva…

So your stance is that as a competent, technically savvy person, you are able to maintain your secrecy and/or privacy on Facebook? Are you aware of the vast amount of implicit data they receive just by you logging in and viewing your friend's posts? The amount of resources FB has dedicated to tech like fingerprinting (both browser based and behavioral) is enough to harvest vast amounts of data from even the most technically savvy people such as yourself.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#303

Post by hoopism » Thu, May 25, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

quest88 wrote: post #6

hoopism wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I've turned my account off before in attempt to walk away... Curious why you would set out to do that as an policy. Why not just turn notifications off and share little to avoid cacheing of data?

Why did you go back?

I go back because I derive enjoyment from sharing with my family who I don't see as often as I'd like. I have kids and they do amazing things (amazing meaning boring average things every kid does) and I want to show someone. FB is best way I know how to do that.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#304

Post by quadrupleslap » Thu, May 25, 2017, 4:48 AM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #169

type0 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact I've thought on multiple occasions that someone is hiding something if they don't have one. I feel the same about people who do use facebook, when they take pictures of me and others who are not on "The Social Network", then they put those on facebook for others to see with other personal information without concent, they don't inform me about their comments regarding those pictures. For all I know those pe…

Expecting people to take an extra step to fit your needs (email) is really almost no different from asking them to share on another platform IMHO. They aren't hiding from you, in fact I'd put money on the table that they'd happily invite you into their group or you'd have access to the photos simply by being their friend on FB. You can't walk outside the bar then complain that none of your friends want to stand in th…

Obviously the point of the analogy was that Facebook's effects are harmful, too, just like those of smoking.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#305

Post by lyra_comms » Thu, May 25, 2017, 10:41 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #255

lyra_comms wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just do text - but we do it well. Text is both very cheap, and very expressive.

As I mentioned in a reply to a comment about another text-only platform, not allowing photos and videos will not attract many users. There will be a small niche of users, but it won't become massive without those. It'd be quite similar to web based forums and discussion platforms. I hope you can figure out how to keep the platform running while allowing non-text content.

Thanks! We're committed to only text, I'm afraid, and the platform is already sustainable :)

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#306

Post by lyra_comms » Thu, May 25, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #255

lyra_comms wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just do text - but we do it well. Text is both very cheap, and very expressive.

As I mentioned in a reply to a comment about another text-only platform, not allowing photos and videos will not attract many users. There will be a small niche of users, but it won't become massive without those. It'd be quite similar to web based forums and discussion platforms. I hope you can figure out how to keep the platform running while allowing non-text content.

Becoming massive isn't one of our aims (we're a nonprofit).

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#307

Post by jancsika » Fri, May 26, 2017, 5:29 AM UTC

SaintSal wrote: post #284

jancsika wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what's the advantage of Facebook over email and/or texting? Discoverability. Facebook has it inside the app. Email and texting require you to go out of band for it. It's impossible to exaggerate the value of this. Groups of people who had lost contact in high school have gotten back in touch in retirement, planned trips, and traveled to a place to meet up together because Facebook has in-band discoverability. B…

> Musicians find gigs through it. Businesses list specials, trips, blogs, etc. Also students are highly reliant on it. These types of loose connections but strong network effects are hard to break. However... > Way cheaper than sending out a snail mail newsletter or even managing an email list. This is true less frequently. Facebook used to be a good organic channel to build, but now FB is forcing more payments, by f…

> This is true less frequently. Facebook used to be a good organic channel to build, but now FB is forcing more payments, by forcing ads to FB pages, and then again for boosting posts on those pages. Plus, the costs are rising.

Less frequently than what? Keep in mind the OP I was responding to apparently didn't see any value to Facebook over email/texting. The fact that Facebook is willing to degrade its service even to be slightly better than managing an email list in return for higher ad revenue isn't particularly relevant to that.

> I experienced this too, but I also had a controlled test, since I wanted to track down some high school friends who weren't on Facebook. Turned out not to be so hard, and caught up with a bunch of other old friends along the way. :)

> Sometimes the alternatives offer other advantages we don't see if we frame the problem as replacing what we have now exactly.

That's great, but it has nothing to do with the value of Facebook's in-band discoverability over email/texting.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#308

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Sun, May 28, 2017, 12:36 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #296

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's an easier protip: use uBlock Origin, and completely hide the right-hand column.

Presumably you mean uMatrix?

No. I'm talking about uBlock Origin, which has a tool (see the button with the little eyedrop icon) which you can use to click on elements of the screen to hide them and save that as a rule. I think this is a bit simpler than uMatrix's UI.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#309

Post by skellum » Sun, May 28, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

Good read, and missed out the shenanigans of Cambridge Analytica. This is a company owned by Robert Mercer, and claims to have influenced the Brexit referendum and Trump election. It did this (or claims to) through personality profiling using facebook likes (see Michal Kosinski for further reading). With personality profiling you can be microtargeted with fake news that matches you confirmation bias. Accurate microtargeting a known confirmation bias is effective for many reasons. It bypasses the person's critical faculties. That's the nature of a confirmation bias. It also bypasses social critical scrutiny. It's aimed at you, no-one else, so the chance of someone else calling is lowered. And yes, you may redistribute the fake news thereby opening debate, but that will be into your social group, a like minded echo chamber that will ruminate and magnify the effect.

Did this happen? Who knows. The evidence is ephemeral, no paper trail to prove or disprove. Which is another scary thing about facebook. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-our-likes-hel...

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#310

Post by OJFord » Mon, May 29, 2017, 8:24 AM UTC

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #308

OJFord wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you mean uMatrix?

No. I'm talking about uBlock Origin, which has a tool (see the button with the little eyedrop icon) which you can use to click on elements of the screen to hide them and save that as a rule. I think this is a bit simpler than uMatrix's UI.

Oh sorry, I completely misunderstood.

I didn't realise you meant visual column - I thought you meant 'use X and in it disable everything in the right-hand column'; since uBlock Origin doesn't have a columnar UI, I assumed you meant uMatrix. :)