Live data from Hacker News

I miss Facebook

cfenollosa.com

21–30 of 123 posts

Re: I miss Facebook

#21

Hits the nail on the head. For me the main uses of FB are now: 1) Rolodex of friends, with reminders from the ones who actually use it. 2) Bad version of stumbleupon. Seriously large amount of unuseful content, but it does kick up something interesting now and again. 3) Reasonable funnies stream. There's always someone with a good meme. There's no real content though. All the news commentary is simply terrible. Loads…

Nice alternatives for (3) are 9gag and imgur. They got the 'typical':

connect.facebook.net, google-analytics.com, googletagservices.com, gstatic.com, imasdk.googleapis.com, scorecardresearch.com, platform.twitter.com, amplitude.com, amazon-adsystem.com, googletagmanager.com

but once you block them with Privacy Badger and/or NoScript (or add them to your hosts file), they are an endless source of memes and other funnies.

Re: I miss Facebook

#22
post #13

I miss IRC, for a lot of the same reasons the author misses Facebook. Being above 35 like the author, I think it’s more the fact that people just aren’t chatty anymore. It’s anecdotal of course, but if I look at myself, I’m really not that chatty anymore either. I too used to have late night chats about random stupid things, but right now, I can even remember when I last saw 3AM unless it was to feed a baby or clean…

[deleted]

Re: I miss Facebook

#23
My solution was to create a fake account with a fake name on FB, never download the app to my phone, never share my phone number, never upload any contacts, never use a real picture, and only add close friends who know who the fake profile is.

Makes me pretty much impossible to look up on the system, I value my privacy and not being listed is important to me. This gives me the best of both worlds. I can join all the interest groups I want, follow all the events, without having to share my identity.

Re: I miss Facebook

#24

Hits the nail on the head. For me the main uses of FB are now: 1) Rolodex of friends, with reminders from the ones who actually use it. 2) Bad version of stumbleupon. Seriously large amount of unuseful content, but it does kick up something interesting now and again. 3) Reasonable funnies stream. There's always someone with a good meme. There's no real content though. All the news commentary is simply terrible. Loads…

I really don't understand tagging friends in a comment on FB and IG. This is precisely what the share feature is for!

Simply put: UX is bad and most people figured out this was an easier way to do it. (Also something that comes to a shock to people working in the Bay: Most people are really not that good with computers).

Also, basic behavior mimicry. You see other people do it so you also do it.

Re: I miss Facebook

#25

I share the feeling. I too am in my mid-thirties, still know my ICQ number by heart (8 digits by the way), was on IRC and used Facebook in the early days. Nowadays I often wonder if my sentimental feeling about the social networks of yesterday is just a function of me getting old. The world changes. It is probably neither better nor worse. It’s just different.

I had a 6 digit ICQ number and I'm about the same age... someone deleted my account using my unlocked computer and I was never able to get it back...

Re: I miss Facebook

#26

Hits the nail on the head. For me the main uses of FB are now: 1) Rolodex of friends, with reminders from the ones who actually use it. 2) Bad version of stumbleupon. Seriously large amount of unuseful content, but it does kick up something interesting now and again. 3) Reasonable funnies stream. There's always someone with a good meme. There's no real content though. All the news commentary is simply terrible. Loads…

I really don't understand tagging friends in a comment on FB and IG. This is precisely what the share feature is for!

People do it because every other option sucks.

Sharing to someone else's timeline is way too invasive, sharing to your own timeline and tagging the person is weird, sharing via message is too disruptive.

What people is looking for is a "Show it to a friend" button that just creates a notification on the person's bell icon and allows them to respond in any way they want.

Re: I miss Facebook

#27
post #13

I miss IRC, for a lot of the same reasons the author misses Facebook. Being above 35 like the author, I think it’s more the fact that people just aren’t chatty anymore. It’s anecdotal of course, but if I look at myself, I’m really not that chatty anymore either. I too used to have late night chats about random stupid things, but right now, I can even remember when I last saw 3AM unless it was to feed a baby or clean…

As a twenty year old, the problem is not that people aren’t chatty; it’s that the people you interact with aren’t chatty. For any niche topic you can find a Discord server or a Telegram channel or a Signal group chat or a Slack server or a whatever, where people are chatting about it 24/7. It’s the same model as IRC, although it is unfortunately now siloed.

How was IRC not siloed when you've always had different networks managed by different people?

Re: I miss Facebook

#29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a twenty year old, the problem is not that people aren’t chatty; it’s that the people you interact with aren’t chatty. For any niche topic you can find a Discord server or a Telegram channel or a Signal group chat or a Slack server or a whatever, where people are chatting about it 24/7. It’s the same model as IRC, although it is unfortunately now siloed.

How was IRC not siloed when you've always had different networks managed by different people?

It's the amount of silos. There was never more than a single digit number of IRC networks that anyone actually cared about. And even if you did need to be connected to a lot of them, you could do it all from the same client.
Post reply on HN