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Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#351

Post by Pixeleen »

otakucode wrote: post #76

Lots of things we see as innocuous online would seem really weird, clingy, abusive in other contexts. Imagine if every time you walked into a store before you even looked at anything someone steps up right into your face and says "Sign up for our newsletter!" Then you walk two steps and someone steps up to you with a phone in their hand "Hey, call your friends and tell them you love our store! We'll give you 5% off!"…

Every postmodern retail shop in the US already does this. Have you been to a Lush, Rituals, matress sales, or any clothing boutique lately? Their peppy, pseudo-personal sales staff has a perfectly crafted script and they know it cold. They'll interrupt me when I'm obviously happily browsing on my own. "Just to let you know, everything in the back is 5% off, everything with a red tag is 6% off, and if you sign up for our email newsletter today, we'll give you $2 off. What is your name, by the way?" I want to ask them if there will be a quiz on the material. They also ask for your phone number or email at checkout. When I politely decline, they often act like that has never happened before

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#352

Post by tmaly »

I deleted the FB app when I had a nexus 5 as it was a major battery drain. I barely go on facebook these days.

What every tricks they are playing, it has reached saturation in my mind.

I just don't find it that interesting or providing any value at this point in time.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#353

Post by technofire »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #310

Although I'm not on Facebook anymore, I have the same problem with LinkedIn. To deal with it, I just add to my email sieve filter every so often. So far I have: ## Linkedin - Trash useless email if allof( address :is "From" "messages-noreply@linkedin.com", anyof( header :regex "Subject" "^(Congratulate|Say happy birthday to) .+", header :regex "Subject" "^Check out .+ (updated profile|new skill|new photo)", header :r…

FYI, LinkedIn has somewhat fine-grained email/notification configuration so you can stop these at the source.

Have a look at Me (menu) > Settings & Privacy > Communications (tab) > Email frequency (controls not only overall frequency but frequency per message type, i.e. group message notifications, invitations, job notifications, connection update notifications, etc.).

Also, you can entirely disable classes of notifications you no longer want to receive/see (even when you're viewing the site) by going to the Notifications tab, then clicking the context menu ("...") on a given notification and selecting "Turn off" (stop receiving this type of notification) or "Unfollow" (stop receiving updates from the given source).

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#354

Post by code_duck »

hasbroslasher wrote: post #133
taylodl wrote: post #2

The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook app from my phone. I had already disabled all the notifications, but that didn't change things like deleting the app. Not being able to get to Facebook wherever you are. As silly as it sounds it was liberating. I still access Facebook from my laptop - but now that it's off of my phone, I'm accessing Facebook less and less frequently and I'm find I'm happier as a resul…

Up until last year, I chalked up the "I deleted my Facebook" phenomenon to hipsterdom or some pathology where people think the can "cure" "addiction" by quitting whatever unhealthy behavior pattern they exhibit for a week or month and then coming back. Last month I deactivated my Facebook and have yet to turn it back on. In the months prior I started finding alternative sources of news: NYT, Pitchfork, HN, various su…

Facebook encourages a lower level of discourse than other message systems, somehow.

I participate in a couple of groups which have come to replace older forums running PHPbb or VBulletin type software. While the old style forums offer too many features and almost excessive permanence for discussions, Facebook offers too little in that regard.

Conversations are not meant to be searchable, archived, permanent, or long or detailed. Unlike VBulletin, where it's easy to find a post you saw 3 days ago or all the posts you've made in a forum, on Facebook everything effectively disappears after a week or two. The content is still there, just very disorganized and difficult to access. Search is inconsistent and very basic for groups.

Most significant is the impact this has on the discussions that take place. On the old forums, posting seemed like a bigger deal and people rarely posted one word responses or sentence fragments. The FB format seems to encourage that. Long, detailed responses about technical matters are difficult to post and read, so people don't post them as often. Discussions are often repeated because nobody can really find the last one to link to it.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#355

Post by odammit »

wincy wrote: post #215
odammit wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Delete Facebook 2. Get banned from HN 3. Be super productive I'm pretty much in an FB and HN dopamine loop all day. -_- Not sure if I'm ready to pull the trigger.

Well with HN you could just use the noprocrast mode, or I've found that editing your hosts file makes sure that you're intentionally browsing a website. I deactivated Facebook, which has surprised me because I still hear from the people I care about (My grandma was a little annoyed but now she's started emailing me). I've also discovered that checking the news once a week (or even once a month!) doesn't make me feel…

I didn't know about noprocrast! Nice.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#356

Post by mimsee »

renaudg wrote: post #292
dannyw wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even roaming, it is free to receive SMSes for my plan and most plans in Australia. If you need to receive an 2FA token, well, you need to receive an 2FA token.

Yes, I failed to mention the roaming exception was for calls only. Since this summer, roaming charges are also banned altogether within the EU.

Not 100% right as some companies in EU member countries such as Finland, where I'm from, were allowed to use a certain clause that would allow them to still add roaming charges (mostly data related). This is done because the majority of operators sell contracts based on the speed and not a monthly GB cap. Almost all contracts are unlimited in data. I for one have a ~30€/month contract that has unlimited data with 50Mbps down / 30Mbps up.

After the roaming change my contract includes ~6GB of roaming data within EU. When that's reached there is a 0.0057€ per MB price in data abroad.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#357

Post by Nursie »

I find it interesting that they guy is talking about tweaks, hooks and pokes to keep you interested, and the whole trying-to-expose-you-to-new-stuff phenomenon... but I find it all makes fb less appealing.

I check it a couple of times a day now I guess. Never allowed it to get its mitts on my phone, though, web use only. More and more of my feed is "Your friend X liked some inconsequential response by Y on a boring post by Z" where I don't even know who Y and Z are.

It may be that my friends are gravitating away and posting less - I certainly am - but I suspect if it is then it's part of a big feedback loop initiated by facebook trying to become a news source rather than just a place to share everyday happenstance and a few pictures with friends.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#358

Post by 1001101 »

wincy wrote: post #216
1001101 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, don't sign up. I'm envious of my friends who are in this category. I deleted after reading about PRISM, then got back on. Deleted again, and then moved away from some friends and got lonely and got back on again. Luckily more and more of my friends are deleting, so should be easier to take the plunge again.

I've found that since my wife and I both deactivated, we've suddenly been finding friends in new places. I invited a coworker and his family over for dinner, which was a great time. We've reconnected with some family of hers that we always thought "they're really nice people, we should get to know them better". Heck, we were at the neighborhood playground in our the other day and we invited a family over to dinner wh…

'Realbook' is what my friends and I jokingly refer to connecting in the real world.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#360

Post by wutbrodo »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #264
hasbroslasher wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until last year, I chalked up the "I deleted my Facebook" phenomenon to hipsterdom or some pathology where people think the can "cure" "addiction" by quitting whatever unhealthy behavior pattern they exhibit for a week or month and then coming back. Last month I deactivated my Facebook and have yet to turn it back on. In the months prior I started finding alternative sources of news: NYT, Pitchfork, HN, various su…

What I did was pare down Facebook to the bare essentials. The only people I have on it are actual would-invite-into-my-home friends, the only pages I follow are for concert venues and bands I like, and I block and turn off every single stupid "joke" page, app and game I see. Now I basically only get posts directly written by my friends, event notifications for concerts, and updates from my favorite bands. I don't use…

Yea I'm not sure why this isn't a more popular option. I do an even less-impactful version of this: I've disabled the Newsfeed (on web), and I've pared down mobile and email notifications to only things that are likely to matter to me like event invites (my friend group uses FB events for pretty much everything, including logistical events for our Burning Man camp).

The main advantage to me is still that it's an easy and stable way to discover and communicate with people I know in real life: there's still nothing that beats the ease of finding someone on Facebook after meeting them, and I very often forget to exchange info with someone in these situations (esp if I've met a lot of cool people that night).

The company itself has been sleazy from day one, and I think they're largely to blame for the trend of fuck-the-user product design[1] in the last ~5 years. But putting a firewall around what I let them do to my devices and my life and taking advantage of what value they do provide has proven really fruitful for me.

[1] There are plenty of things that used to be deal-breakers for me, like spamming the notification bar to increase engagement: companies like Google held out for a long time against this, but Facebook led the charge into making it ubiquitous and now the new equilibrium is that most large apps do it (even @#$%ing Google Maps!)

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