how about de-friending some people? I do it and it works pretty well.
Goodbye Facebook.
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#92Hold on. First off, you should have deleted your account years ago.
"Connecting with friends" is a terrible point to make: e-mail has been around for decades. However, such a point does intersect with my main goal for making this post. People are lazy. Now programmers are saying it, and now everyone else will realize just how true it is, and being lazy has consequences.
So, we've had e-mail for decades. Why won't people use it? Instead of wasted texting plans, etc.? You could always keep up with your friends and family through e-mail. But the interfaces were either ugly, inconvenient, or disorganized. It's beyond me that an {interface} should have to tell me to contact my mother or that an {interface} should compel me to "keep up with old friends."
This. Is. Absurd.
[Luddite Rant:] Sorry, but pick up the damn phone and call them. (Or click "compose" and just {try} to type out something meaningful.)
I believe this finely leads into my next point: Not many of you have anything Gricean (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html) to say. What [would] you say in an e-mail to a friend? --
People don't have much to say anyway (and for my personal stake in it, it's because they're not reading anything interesting), and Facebook isn't going to change that. That, I think, is the point behind http://weknowwhatyouredoing.com/. There's nothing-to-hide, and conversely, there's nothing-to-show either. FB is an enabler of oversharing, and it's allowing people to empty out too much without taking in substantive content.
I'm going to say it engenders bad cognitive hygiene.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Nowadays, if you "Like" something, then that something can pay for the privilege to insert whatever stories it likes into your friends' facebook feeds, under the heading "so-and-so likes such-and-such" followed by your own message." I find myself wanting to set up a Facebook account just to start screwing with that. Is it something that can be screwed with? ("jerf liked Crest brand toothpaste! He said: 'When you get…
That's not how it works. Instead, Crelm toothpaste will note that you've liked them and forevermore your friends will get stories posted directly by Crelm toothpaste with the heading Jerf likes Crelm Toothpaste [blah blah blah a big picture depicting how wonderful Crelm toothpaste is]
So when you say "followed by your own message", the "your" is the advertiser? (That's valid, just clarifying.)
Of course, it could be no other way, since I'm hardly the only one who feels this way.
As my message implies, I'm not actually on Facebook, but my wife yesterday registered a complaint about a cousin I have that "likes" a couple dozen things a day. (And again, disclaimer, I don't actually take the HN discussions to her, as a non-tech person she ends up bringing them to me. These are not uncommon feelings.) Of course Facebook is just selling eyeballs, but there's a delicate dance of deception they must do with their users to not let it become blatent. If it becomes blindingly obvious that the users are taking second priority to the real customers, the users will eventually leave, and then where will the real customers be?
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#94The problem seems to ultimately always boil down to "I added far too many people to Facebook as friends, and now Facebook is useless!"
To which the solution is easy: cut down the number of people you are friends with on Facebook.
For me, I have < 30 people I've friended on Facebook. But they're real friends and family, people I know and want to keep in touch with. And that's made all the difference to how I use Facebook.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#95Facebook will struggle to make the next leap (IMHO, of course) because there's a disconnect between how users want to use it, and how Facebook wants/needs you to use it. Outside of the sub-group of individuals who thrive on sharing every aspect of their life, most people want Facebook to be a fancy email. There's all your friends; you can talk with them and literally see what they're up to . And to be honest, the pla…
It was always more about photo sharing than talking with my friends. More of a fancy Flickr than a fancy e-mail.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#96The anecodte the poster gives is spot on and huge. There have been many times I've thought "I wonder why I don't hear from this person anymore" and it was simply a matter of Facebook no longer prioritizing their posts in my news feed. Just because someones post isn't "liked" or clicked on in some way doesn't mean it's not valuable. It's a passive form of communication. I don't know if this is just my perception, and…
But Facebook offers comprehensive controls that let you decide who appears on your news feed and who does not. You just need to use them.
Can you block sponsored stories? Besides, what good are controls if they keep 'evolving' and force you to actually maintain those settings. Settings and prefs should be fire and forget. I should not have to revisit settings in response to some new feature. For example, that jackass new @facebook email thing. Facebook is circa 1999 Windows.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#97Aside from the fact that this post is mostly pointless, it's also totally misinformed. The OP started off by stating his reasons for dropping FB in this "experiment".. namely losing touch with the people for which he originally signed up under. But he clearly doesn't engage with them if he's not seeing their updates. Your social graph needs fine tuning. It's like any good bayesian filter, it learns over time what int…
Fuck the social graph.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook already includes tools to solve your issues. Either unfriend the vague acquintances, hide all their posts from your feed, or hide the annoying posts following some criteria.
It doesn't work, there is a family member I have set to "Never show up on my news feed", and keeps coming back every time.
I "unsubscribed" from the family member I no longer want to hear from. That way we're still "friends", I can visit his page and read what he's been posting, but it doesn't show up on my feed.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do I need to invest time in "fine tuning my social graph"? What's in it for me? And is it even my social graph? Facebook is not about "helping you connect to your friends", it's about buying eyeball-time and pumping commercials into your brain. Any person that has not been completely brainwashed can see the fallacy in this kind of system.
> it's about buying eyeball-time and pumping > commercials into your brain. You've just defined television. I think that you need to broaden your definition of Facebook if you want people to listen to you point. Facebook is more than just the local television company.
It's more like cable access. Occasionally, there'll be something interesting, but most of the time it's a bunch of people standing around trying to put on a show about stuff about which no one cares.
Re: Goodbye Facebook.
#100Well the OP is right about one thing: Facebook has become less personal. I regret accepting old high school/college friends (who I haven't' seen in 25 years), army buds, and family members I didn't even know I had. Now I post, maybe once every 2 weeks. Usually something safe - like about the current game I'm playing. I don't dare get personal on FB now.
Just remove them. They'll still stay on as subscribers and see public posts.