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Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#41

Post by loudmax »

aneth wrote: post #20

Not to be uncool, but I enjoy Facebook. I find it to be a fun way to stay in touch with connections, discuss, share, chat, etc. Sure I want data portability, but I believe that will come in time from competitive and user forces, and my life is not a protest. My online social activity is inane anyway - I don't care that much who stores it. If you are worried about your activities being tracked and sold, stop using you…

I feel the same way, but I'd emphasize that interoperability won't happen by accident. We users need push for it and encourage competition. It's not that Facebook should lose, but that Google+, LinkedIn, Skype/MSN, and miscellaneous startups like Diaspora should also win.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#42

Post by babarock »

I have a Facebook account, that I never use. It's not that I'm against it in theory, I'm just never compelled to use it. I created the account in 2006, then closed it from late 2007 to 2009. I re-opened it because I believe Facbook presents us with great oportunities and there's so much one can do now thanks to it.

Here we are, almost 3 years later, I have this mostly inactive account, with around 100 contact, most of them being people from my old high school or college.

I think I never get myself to use it because, despite the wealth of info it presents, it doesn't give me a practical way to use the data (REST anyone?).

I recently heard of the Graph API, so now I'm curious and excited again :)

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#43

Post by vpdn »

Even if you don't use facebook, you should probably have an account to see the mechanics of it. It's mind boggling how a product is able to attract 800 million people, with 50% of the users logging in on any given day. There's something to learn here.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#44

Post by jorisw »

samstave wrote: post #7
bipartitegraph wrote: post #4

What is the rationale behind deleting LinkedIn?

Second this question. I find Linkedin to be of value. I have never had an account on the book and never will.

I have a LinkedIn account and all I ever do on it is accept incoming connection requests. Other than that, I never ever use it for anything. Except maybe once a year to see if guy X who left the company found a new job yet.

Many connection requests are recruiters over here, too. I ignore those.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#46

Post by eCa »

RomP wrote: post #33
acslater00 wrote: post #24

Sorry, the 32 of you (as of this moment, out of 152) who claim to never have had a facebook account. I call shenanigans. I don't believe for one second that 20% of a sample of hacker news readers never, ever had a facebook account.

I'm one of them. I asked this same question in my team a few weeks ago: I got very similar sampling. The team is composed of 7 hackers (native code, embedded speech-related software). In other words, I tend to believe the results we're getting so far.

Me too. Only way I would be a member is on a dedicated Virtualbox guest. *.facebook.com is not allowed to store cookies in my Firefox.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#47

Post by introspectif »

I'm on the hatin' side actually. Locked down privacy to the max, only to find it all re-opened again when FB changed their privacy options. That happened 3 times.

Those shenanigans finally stopped, but then I'd be browsing the web and find comments like 'Your friend x likes this page.' It's creepy that to see that on a site I've never visited before when I have my FB locked down completely. I understand the technology, but the instinctive reaction is still 'How the hell do you know who my friends are, random website?'

I haven't noticed that lately (desensitized to it?), but I just noticed on a friend's public-facing FB page (I logged out to verify that it was totally public) that it said she was in Country Y, city Z on date D, with ME. There was my full name and my location in the world posted to the world, despite locking down EVERY SINGLE privacy setting available and allowing NO third party applications, etc. Even my friends cannot see or post to my 'wall.' This is all very disturbing, so yes, I'm still hatin', despite recognizing the cool benefits of a single centralized place to stay in touch.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#48

Post by jrockway »

I'll be honest. The main reason I deleted my Facebook accounts is because I didn't want to socialize with the people that I added as friends there. It was Twitter for people that didn't get the Internet, and that resulted in a lot of garbage to wade through. Also, apps and their spam were intolerable. Finally, it's written in PHP and the way they draw people in Farmville weirds me out.

At some point I thought I was being pretty cool for opting out, but now I realize it just isn't a product for me. There is not a lot intrinsically wrong with it; a lot of people seem to like it very much.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#49

Post by 0ne »

aneth wrote: post #20

Not to be uncool, but I enjoy Facebook. I find it to be a fun way to stay in touch with connections, discuss, share, chat, etc. Sure I want data portability, but I believe that will come in time from competitive and user forces, and my life is not a protest. My online social activity is inane anyway - I don't care that much who stores it. If you are worried about your activities being tracked and sold, stop using you…

I like sharing stuff with my friends. I only add people I know but I go under a fake name (which seems like a false sense of security TBH).

I won't delete it because it's fun.

One thing I worry about online is someone misinterpreting what I share. For example, I share a lot of hacker related news.

I am really interested in reasons why not to have one or delete it entirely.

Re: Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

#50

Post by Teknomad »

loudmax wrote: post #41
aneth wrote: post #20

Not to be uncool, but I enjoy Facebook. I find it to be a fun way to stay in touch with connections, discuss, share, chat, etc. Sure I want data portability, but I believe that will come in time from competitive and user forces, and my life is not a protest. My online social activity is inane anyway - I don't care that much who stores it. If you are worried about your activities being tracked and sold, stop using you…

I feel the same way, but I'd emphasize that interoperability won't happen by accident. We users need push for it and encourage competition. It's not that Facebook should lose, but that Google+, LinkedIn, Skype/MSN, and miscellaneous startups like Diaspora should also win.

Ditto. I got rid of my Facebook account for that reason, primarily -- I don't believe monopoly is ever a good thing and Facebook is headed that way fast (simply because of the network effect, not because they're gurus at building monopolies).

There's another reason I ditched Facebook, though. I found that my life was getting too entangled with other people. I had a lot of friends in the past who worked or still work for the US govt. and my current views on that government (that it is corrupt to the core and needs to be rebooted) were making them afraid for their jobs. Simply unfriending me is not enough, because Facebook has a memory...so I sent everyone my email and Twitter ID and went through the 2-week-long process of deleting my Facebook account.

What scares the hell out of me is that Facebook is concentrating so much personal knowledge in one place -- one-stop shopping for corrupt governments!

The proper approach is to federate the social networks together, so people can move from Facebook to Twitter to G+ to LinkedIn effortlessly but retain control of their data and hence put up a sizable barrier to corruption.

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