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Facebook is an attack on the open web

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Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#171

Post by davidwparker »

steveadoo wrote: post #52
Tossrock wrote: post #19

I deactivated my Facebook account several months ago, and it's been about 90% great, 10% frustrating. It's great for all the obvious reasons (less timesuck, less compulsion to endlessly scroll your life away, no notification interruptions). The frustrations are real, though. Primarily it's around events and photos. There are some communities I participate in that regularly organize events through Facebook, and now I…

Can't you just have Facebook and only use it for the events/photos? I've got a Facebook but never use it for posting/looking at other people's posts. Every now and then I'll get an invitation to an event which is really all I use it for.

This is exactly what I do. I use Facebook for a few "Close friends" that are across the world and I still like to know what they're up to.

There's a few communities that I'm in that I wouldn't even know about, event-wise, if I wasn't on Facebook. I can't imagine missing those- I'm surprised others don't use Facebook more for events.

As others have mentioned, I also use News Feed Eradicator, so I don't even see anything on Facebook, unless it's one of my close friends. It's fantastic, and my time on the site is probably less than 2 minutes/day.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#172

Post by FabHK »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #124
res0nat0r wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've cut out Facebook without 99% of the hand wringing here. I just stop browsing the site. If someone wants to talk to me I get a popup on my Messenger app on my phone, and if I get an event invite it shows up there too. Problem solved.

Indeed. You can have a Facebook account and just... Not use it unless you need it for something. All the benefits of the 'I deleted Facebook' crowd without the downsides.

Facebook will still learn which websites you visit (provided they have the "like" widget) and what articles you read on the NYT, unless you use a good tracking blocker.

So, that's one downside, I think.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#173

Post by odbol_ »

dilap wrote: post #94
adtac wrote: post #14

You've ever been to one of those pages that embed Facebook's comment engine? Yeah, those are the worst. I did some analysis on a random page with just three Facebook comments. Requests to Facebook's servers accounted for 1.5 MB of the 2.4 MB tranfered by the ENTIRE page. 87 network requests, 35 javascript files injected and it didn't even load all the comments! (I had to click on a "Load more comments" button to load…

Oh god, the shit where incredibly overweight pages make you click the slow "load more" buttons just to load a few more kb of text that could've been immediately shown to you for basically no extra cost drives me crazy. And as much as facebook sucks, most web sites suck. It's amazing to me how many sites I read on my phone are basically unusable until I fall back on Safari's reader mode. Javascript handlers that fuck…

Design for Time Well Spent http://www.timewellspent.io/

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#174

Post by Chaebixi »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #50
Tossrock wrote: post #19

I deactivated my Facebook account several months ago, and it's been about 90% great, 10% frustrating. It's great for all the obvious reasons (less timesuck, less compulsion to endlessly scroll your life away, no notification interruptions). The frustrations are real, though. Primarily it's around events and photos. There are some communities I participate in that regularly organize events through Facebook, and now I…

Facebook was great in the early years. No ads, no political spam, no viral garbage, no pictures of what your friend ate for dinner, no psychologically manipulative algorithms. Just people talking to their friends and posting pictures of themselves hanging out. If someone made a new social network like that, I'd sign up today.

> Facebook was great in the early years.

That seems to be depressingly true of any social website. There seems to be a sort, sweet spot that exists briefly between the implementation of a good idea and when the parasites catch on and move in to ruin it.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#175

Post by gnicholas »

iamatworknow wrote: post #115
steveadoo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just have Facebook and only use it for the events/photos? I've got a Facebook but never use it for posting/looking at other people's posts. Every now and then I'll get an invitation to an event which is really all I use it for.

I do this as well. No app on my phone (including messenger) and I purposely only use the site in one browser on one device (Safari on my Macbook), and only check it maybe once per day. Added bonus is that Facebook isn't getting all of that tracking cookie info from me (or at least not as easily) since I don't use Safari for anything else.

I do the same thing (but more than once a day; sigh), but I still see creepy tracking ads. Recently I saw ads on FB for an item that my wife had been shopping for on a different computer. I'd be curious to know how they're making this connection — based on IP address, or using something like Drawbridge? https://www.drawbridge.com/

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#177

Post by 5ourpu55 »

Some ( pro-facebook?) people in this thread appear to have very little empathy for people, like me, who were not able to pull themselves away from the designed-to-be-addictive social media platform, without deleting it completely.

Yes. Having an account sitting around, with all of my friends attached to it, was too much of a temptation for me. Purging the entire thing from my life was the only thing that worked.

I like to make things easy on myself: I don't keep booze around because I drink it like a fish. I don't keep weed around because I smoke it like Snoop Dogg. I don't keep junk-food around because I eat it. I live right next to my gym to make it easy to get to. I don't keep facebook around because I browse it.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#178

Post by mysterydip »

iamatworknow wrote: post #144
mysterydip wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey all, look at this amazing new thing I just got (for free from the company that sponsors me that I don't disclose)!" Maybe it's the same on the rest, but it seems there's a larger portion of it on Instagram.

Maybe I'm unique in my usage of Instagram but I only follow people I know in real life or other photographers, amateur or otherwise, and they typically aren't posting sponsored content. I've only ever seen one person post sponsored content out of hundreds I follow, and it was pretty easy to unfollow them.

That's likely the difference. My wife follows people with similar interests, rather than only people she knows, so undoubtedly sees more of it.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#179

Post by slouch »

dilap wrote: post #94
adtac wrote: post #14

You've ever been to one of those pages that embed Facebook's comment engine? Yeah, those are the worst. I did some analysis on a random page with just three Facebook comments. Requests to Facebook's servers accounted for 1.5 MB of the 2.4 MB tranfered by the ENTIRE page. 87 network requests, 35 javascript files injected and it didn't even load all the comments! (I had to click on a "Load more comments" button to load…

Oh god, the shit where incredibly overweight pages make you click the slow "load more" buttons just to load a few more kb of text that could've been immediately shown to you for basically no extra cost drives me crazy. And as much as facebook sucks, most web sites suck. It's amazing to me how many sites I read on my phone are basically unusable until I fall back on Safari's reader mode. Javascript handlers that fuck…

Those "show more" buttons aren't about not loading text--they bring the ads below the content into your viewport sooner. The content is there the whole time.

Re: Facebook is an attack on the open web

#180

Post by gorhill »

Balgair wrote: post #126
Jach wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Facebook will still track you (this applies even if you don't have a Facebook account). You'd need to block their domain and any ad domains that may be related. (Edit: Also mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14463127 )

You think uBlock Origin helps with that? I genuinely do not know.

I wrote an example of how to reduce privacy exposure by blocking ubiquitous domains using uBO's point-and-click "firewall" pane, and used Facebook as an example:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-to...

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