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The Facebook experiment has failed

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Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#41

I disagree with the general statement and basically every sub point. - Indiscriminate Sharing I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to. I don't want to be pressured to create circles of friends for different things. If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see then it's a mist…

"- Indiscriminate sharing..."

I like this point. Personally, I find that there's too much friction between choosing which friend belongs where and then further choosing the appropriate group when sharing content. I might just be lazy but it just doesn't work for me.

I also think there's a certain value in being well behaved when sharing content if you have people on there that you wouldn't want them to see, for example colleagues, managers and, more importantly, children. For example, I look after a 2.5 year old boy and I do not use curse words in his vicinity nor do I look at pictures of boobs when he can see. It's just not proper. However, I'm free to do those things when he is in bed and out of the way (with regards to boobs, I don't but me and my fiance will behave like adults).

Based on this, rather than a whole bunch of categories for your friends, why not set up certain filters? This could be quite simple: Do not allow friends under the age of x to see my content at all after HH:MM and before HH:MM. These can also be set on a per-friend basis so if you have a couple of colleagues as friends that haven't set their workplace, you can set something like this up for them too.

A way to only share to certain people is great but FB has this and it's adequate: groups. I founded a number of programming groups and I will share stuff relating to that to them rather than my news feed since it's more suited to them AND there are many people in there I'm not friends with. It's a great way to get good, categorised discussion and the added bonus of meeting new people.

As I said, I don't think it's very valuable, not in terms of technology but in terms of society, for people to be able to share unlimited amounts of content at all times which you wouldn't share to the whole public.

"- Facebook gets worse the more you use it..."

The disagreement with this is good too: it's the way you to use it. I use FB slightly differently but, as said above, setting up my programming groups and inspiring others to do the same has created a great community within Facebook and I can honestly say I've had some very decent conversations as a result of this, even with people I don't know or never met. This isn't what FB sells itself as but it can be done quite easily and I see value in that.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#42
I love Medium titles. They always pop into Hacker News with dramatic headlines, begging you to see what the author's radical notion is.

In reading this post, I have a very hard time sympathizing with this author's point. He's taking his personal expectations and experience of Facebook and projecting it to a catastrophic failure of the entire company to reach its audience - that's unfair at best, and honestly narcissistic. Nearly a billion people use Facebook, it's not a failure. This is like saying Google has botched search. No, Google and Facebook practically control their domains.

Is there room for disruption? Sure. Is Facebook perfect? No. But I believe the author is using Facebook the wrong way based on his points. It's not a professional platform. I don't use it the same way I use Twitter.

A rebuttal, in order of points made:

>Jump through hoops...share selectively.

News flash, most people don't care. I actively use Facebook and I've literally never touched the selective buttons for what to share with who or what to delineate between friends. I use Facebook for friends - there isn't a boilerplate for this when you sign up. It's for friends - the only reason Facebook introduced this was so that you could share that funny, raunchy video and your girlfriend's mom won't see it.

>As you use Facebook...you accumulate friends.

This entire point is null and void. You set it up by implying you have no control over the friends you make or the groups you join. That's blatantly false. Just don't friend professional coworkers or acquaintances. Again, not difficult.

>Loudmouths now have gigantic megaphones.

Dude, skim or limit your newsfeed. Are you so intolerant that you feel didactically opposed to the feature? It's not as painful as all that, you pass a status, read the first sentence, and decide if you have interest. If not, move on, don't comment. If it really offends you, defriend the person or limit what you can see from them on your newsfeed. There's a button literally next to their name.

>Social media scamsters.

I'll give this to you. However, I personally find more amusement than anything. And while I don't want to criticize you, you might want to be more selective in who you see sharing from on your newsfeed. I find the people who share this (gullible friends) are outliers and you can deal with them individually in the same manner as the above bullet point.

In summation, I believe the author doesn't understand why his qualms are actually features - it seems as though he's using it for the wrong reason. I'm not going to say Facebook is flawless. It's not, there is a lot to critique and it has things that could be improved. But all of this is not constructive criticism and it's mostly doom-seeking. Does he have a better idea for a social network? How can he condemn Facebook as a failure? His authority and points don't support that claim.

If you're looking for a system where friends are not just friends, but everyone you know, and you need selectivity in sharing or conversations, go to Twitter or Google Plus. If you want to kill time and have more or less the same experience with friends, with the same annoyances (native to social interaction, not the medium), go to Facebook.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#43
post #29

Funny how much a lot of this person's complaints ring exactly like a Google+ marketing campaign, and yet no one has really mentioned Google+ yet. I totally agree, and that's not to say that Google+'s stream isn't equally filled with content I don't care about, but that is also because I followed a random circle of 500 "interesting people". Google+'s focus on smaller circles as it's primary feature, and I think the la…

Except it really is not. Facebook friends can be equally curated and pruned. Facebook offers its own variant of circles, and importantly my friends are on facebook which can facilitate discussion. Even though everyone has gmail and Google is forcing G+ down everybody's throat, G+ has not taken off. There is no material to discuss on G+. Besides, the same problems will creep in with G+ too. Do you want to pick and choose content to share to a particular circle? It is a good idea, but it is cumbersome.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#44
post #3

Typical overzealous and incorrect analysis. Facebook may have failed for the author, but Facebook is not a failure. Its user base, advertising base and page traffic paint quite the opposite picture. Also, "people can message each other, post text updates and pictures". This is exactly what I use Facebook for, and it works pretty well for me. I get updates and pictures from my friends and family, and I have tuned it s…

and I have tuned it I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the vast, vast majority of Facebook users (like, 90%+ is my SWAG) don't do any tuning at all. I'm also going to guess that a large percentage of users "friend" people they aren't friends with in real-life, due to just "shared common interest" or whatever. IF both of these assumptions hold, then the scenario the author of TFA is painting, could well…

Good lord, man. How do you deal with people you meet in real life? Do you walk around responding "What you just said is irrelevant to me."?

What if the algorithm you think you want is actually the opposite of what you might find interesting tomorrow? Most people are complex, interesting creatures finding new inspirations and communicating them on a daily basis. People grow, change, they find out what is interesting to post. We're in the baby stages of this whole online social experiment.

Regardless of that: I find it's generally _people_ I can choose to hide from my news feed (usually because they constantly post things that annoy me). And with what, maybe one of those people hidden every few months, I otherwise actually have a pleasant experience catching up on what my friends & family have been up to. It's not that complicated...

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#45

I disagree with the general statement and basically every sub point. - Indiscriminate Sharing I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to. I don't want to be pressured to create circles of friends for different things. If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see then it's a mist…

This: If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see than it's a mistake to post it. is a privileged perspective. I'm guessing a lot of HNers aren't subject to gang injunctions, but imagine for a moment that you are. Suddenly, "pictures of me and my friends hanging out" become dangerous, something that can land you in jail. Or let's say you identify as queer to your close friends a…

1) I really don't say this to attack you personally, but frankly using the word "privileged" like that is whiny typical out if touch grad-student speak, it's divorced from reality. People are not that helpless

2) Anyone who actually finds themselves under a gang injunction or might be hurt by bigoted family members ought to be smart and not post & overshare.

3) Self-censorship & under sharing is a wonderful strategy to make one's life easier. Publicly posting on ad-supported social networks isn't free speech or a crucial method of self-expression. If one is under threat, there are tons of ways to express oneself- all of which are low to zero cost: Go blog; make a fake twitter account; etc

4) The thing I'm genuinely scared of is "frictionless sharing" on social networks (Esp Linkedin) that can have real-life implications.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#46

I love Medium titles. They always pop into Hacker News with dramatic headlines, begging you to see what the author's radical notion is. In reading this post, I have a very hard time sympathizing with this author's point. He's taking his personal expectations and experience of Facebook and projecting it to a catastrophic failure of the entire company to reach its audience - that's unfair at best, and honestly narcissi…

[deleted]

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see than it's a mistake to post it. is a privileged perspective. I'm guessing a lot of HNers aren't subject to gang injunctions, but imagine for a moment that you are. Suddenly, "pictures of me and my friends hanging out" become dangerous, something that can land you in jail. Or let's say you identify as queer to your close friends a…

1) I really don't say this to attack you personally, but frankly using the word "privileged" like that is whiny typical out if touch grad-student speak, it's divorced from reality. People are not that helpless 2) Anyone who actually finds themselves under a gang injunction or might be hurt by bigoted family members ought to be smart and not post & overshare. 3) Self-censorship & under sharing is a wonderful strategy…

I don't mean this personally either, but I think anyone who believes using the word "privileged" is "out-of-touch" probably needs to get more in touch with levels of society outside their own.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#48
post #35

People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN. But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely on your friends and how you interact with Facebook. And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these p…

Completely agree. Most every point he makes doesn't apply to my use of Facebook.

The one that is interesting is his comparison to Google and SEO. In Google's world there are three players: (1) the searchers, (2) the advertisers and (3) the black hats who try to game the system. Unfortunately for Facebook, (2) and (3) are the same, so the people they make money from are also the people who are degrading the system. They don't have Google's luxury of cracking down hard on (3) because that's who their income comes from, which ends up sucking for the rest of us.

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