191–200 of 234 posts
I have to admit, in times of Corona, without parties and concerts, the value of Facebook has sunken drastically. My main activity was to stay up to date on events. What's happening, who goes where, etc.
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My take is that FB lost its value when it started to become taken over by content that wasn't part of its initial offerings. Instead of photos and personal posts, we mostly see news, political posts, ads, pages, groups, etc. It starts to become more like an aggregator of things we did not initially intend to follow, but we've chosen to follow bit-by-bit - maybe that speaks to the design of Facebook leading us down th…
> Personally, I really can't see why all this hatred is directed at Facebook when Twitter and Reddit are around. But this isn't a binary choice either. Can't speak for anyone else, but as OP my post isn't about deleting Facebook because social media is rampant cesspool of dopamine hits. But because Facebook, Inc is an evil company and we shouldn't use their products.
Sincere question: what do you mean by this? I don't perceive them as "evil". That comes off as a vague and subjective accusation. What specifically are you referring to? What makes them worse than other organizations?
I am 28 and none of my peers is using FB anymore. I have some older friends that do their yearly christmas party invite on FB and some people who chat with me on FB messenger. There primarily are ads, spam, people posting commercial content and people congratulating each other for their birthdays. Is facebook this dead for anyone else?
So, whenever someone makes a fuss about that huge importance of deleting Facebook and how supposedly hard it is - I genuinely fail to understand the problem.
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I've been very inactive, in the older age range. That's a big shift. It was driven by the move to just constant clickbait controversy / political shares in news feed and other factors. Way back in feb I made a post suggesting masks might be a low cost / useful way to reduce spread of covid, that was attacked by everyone as not recommended and that they don't work, and so I just gave up on facebook at that point.
I still have the account. But have not logged in in months. There is one or two people who that is the only way I can contact them at all. I have been backing away from it for about 3-4 years now. My wife blew away her account 5-6 years ago. It was mostly a nice way to reminisce about old friendships, at first . But then you quickly remembered why they are no longer current friends. I figured out that Facebook itself…
I had similar feelings before I left Facebook. This sort of thing even irked me back in high school, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.
Every time it was my birthday, my timeline (or "wall" as I think it's known on FB) was inundated with Birthday wishes and greetings. Most of these greetings and wishes came from people who very rarely, if ever, talked to me on FB and oftentimes, never talked to me in real life (Usually my "true" friends would send me a direct message and wish me a Happy Birthday), and these people most certainly wouldn't know when my birthday was if Facebook hadn't reminded them.
It all just seemed so disingenuous, fake, and at the risk of exaggerating, inhuman. It all felt so joyless and disconnected. Before I left FB, I simply got to the point where I wouldn't comment, like, or interact with these birthday wishes in any way. Eventually, the amount of birthday wishes I received became less and less. Thinking about it now, I probably should've just removed my birthday from Facebook.
Regardless, I'm happier without Facebook and I certainly don't miss it.
How does everyone else who deleted FB deal with the "old friends" problem? I don't have email or phone numbers for dozens of old friends from HS and University, it'd be fun to ping them with this or that once in a while.
It is fine for internet companies to censor hate, violence, nudity etc. but not the opinions of people that are politely presented simply because they disagree
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Social networks love to throw around the term "friend" as though all the kinds of relationships it denotes are the same. Clearly, it isn't. There are people I know from mailing lists and newsgroups and fora who are my acquaintances, even though we've never met in meatspace. I have cried over their deaths and been happy at news of their joys. There are people I remember from tens of years and thousands of miles away,…
Your mention of mailing lists/fora/newsgroups made me wonder about how easy it is for people today to forge those same (non-"friends", but still) close relationships with strangers today. I definitely remember those close bonds with other internet users in the 1990s and early millennium. However, today due to everyone moving to Facebook and other content silos with a mobile app, independent website forums are severel…
Tools being tools, some of them are better than others.
Here's a list of subjects that I know people have bonded over:
- fandom of specific works - generic fandom - fish aquaria - genre literature - a period of history - games (video, board, role-playing, LARP...) - sports - watches - cars - appliance repair - carpentry
You need strict enough moderation that firefights and trolls are quashed immediately, and loose enough moderation that the occasional side-conversation or on-topic rant is allowed through. Proper threading and the ability to know what you've already seen and what is new: those are also necessary.
The internet is what you make of it.
Also, Vero is a decent alternative if you can get your circle into it.
Counterpoint: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/03/how-vero-went-from-mos...
Unfortunately, I never been able to get people to try it.
Even so, the fidelity of access you have control over is brilliant. I can hide my content, open it up, hide it again...whenever I want and instantly.
Something to think about if anyone were to try to create a new platform.
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> Everybody I know is on Whatsapp/Signal I wish I could say this. It seems the US is the only country where everyone wants to continue using SMS/iMessage for everything. It's literally the only way to communicate with most of my American friends.
> It seems the US is the only country where everyone wants to continue using SMS/iMessage for everything. I use Whatsapp regularly and it still can't hold a candle to iMessage. I blame Android adoption, and the fact that Google never built an iMessage competitor so they are stuck with 20 year old SMS.
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Counterpoint: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/03/how-vero-went-from-mos...
That's unfortunate. I do like the model Vero has created, though I would never be impacted by the sales model since I was just looking for a social network where I can keep in touch with a group of friends and family. Unfortunately, I never been able to get people to try it. Even so, the fidelity of access you have control over is brilliant. I can hide my content, open it up, hide it again...whenever I want and insta…