The Facebook experiment has failed • Hacker News Board

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#71

Post by lsc » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:18 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #12

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…

>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.

And this is why I'm not on facebook

Sure, I'm cool with family baby photos, and "oh, my kid did X, y or Z, I'm so proud" you know, that's what I expect out of a family list. that's all well and good.

But if I have to wade through a gazillion "likes" and a bunch of half-baked emotionally-charged political rants to get at those things?

Nope. I'm logging off. Seriously, do you know how many messages I get a day that I actually have to deal with? It's a large number. It's not at all unusual for me to send 30 emails before I take my morning shower.

That's the thing about email. We've worked out an etiquette. Nobody is going to email me a link to a funny cat video; or email me an emotionally charged political rant. that's rude, and I'll tell family that is rude if they start doing that to me.

In fact, that's the thing I like about facebook the most; it is such a great platform for emotionally charged political rants and cute cat pictures that my family has moved all that stuff to facebook and off of email. I mean, I'm missing all the baby pictures now, but that's a price I can pay.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#72

Post by lesswire » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:25 AM UTC

Facebook is not meant to be for creating ideas. It is meant to entertain you by knowing what your friends are doing.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#73

Post by zt » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:26 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #51

Lately I've noticed something odd. When I find a story I find interesting, I email it to some of my closest friends and we talk about it in email. It feels very 2003, but it works and feels more private and intimate. Similarly, when I take a picture I want to share with my family, I sms it to them. Facebook is still great, but it's different than what it used to be. It's (for me) evolved into my less-close friends' v…

My best friend and I actually run a ~100 person listserv to this end. We call it "Feed Your Brain" and people send out interesting articles, music, poetry, etc, they find on the internet. Sometimes there is a great discussion or debate, sometimes not. It is very private and intimate and it feels closer to early Reddit or HN than anything else I have found.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#74

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:27 AM UTC

Indiscriminate friending is a big problem. People friend and stay friends on Facebook with people who are no longer relevant to them. There are easy fixes for it.

1) Either tell Facebook to explicitly ignore these people's posts so that they're hidden from your feed.

2) Just unfriend people who don't matter.

3) Don't friend people who aren't consistently in your life in the first place.

4) Don't use Facebook as often.

Facebook isn't broken; people just need to do house cleaning and to stop using it like linkedin

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#75

Post by andyhmltn » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:34 AM UTC

onedev wrote: post #7

andyhmltn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the pictures and the status updates are lost In a sea of spammy adverts and shares, the messaging becomes the only feature that I can use anymore.

My FB feed is phenomenal. I hide people that post spam, and unfollow pages that spam me. What's left is the people I care about and the content from pages I care about (e.g. The Economist posts really good content every day, so does Rap Genius, and brands like Nike/Adidas; all of which I like-- in the traditional sense). It's basically my "newspaper". I even follow HN and it feeds me the newest stuff from HN alongsid…

You're a very lucky person then! Sadly I'm at around the 1,000 friends mark and I have a feeling it'd be a bit too much work to make my timeline useful again.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#76

Post by microtherion » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:38 AM UTC

The last round of Facebook complaints on HN I recall was by page owners complaining that not their entire audience would see every single one of their updates.

Now we have a complaint about seeing too many updates.

Am I the only FB user thinking that overall, FB does a pretty good job in prioritizing updates? (i.e. the further down I scroll in my news feed, the less likely I see something I truly care about).

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#77

Post by lsc » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:39 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #30

beatpanda wrote: post #22

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…

What I'm saying is that if you have real secrets it's a bad idea to share them to a subset online because it's trivial for that to get shared outside of that group. I also think these situations are not the common case and because of this should not be the default. The ability to configure this exists within facebook.

>What I'm saying is that if you have real secrets it's a bad idea to share them to a subset online because it's trivial for that to get shared outside of that group.

Using a pseudonym can help a lot. I mean, it's not 100%, but it's really the best you've got.

but yeah, that's what I think is wrong with both facebook and google plus; both expect us to have a single identity, and then to trust them to separate out our different faces to different groups. I mean, the big problem here is that they expect me to use my real name. Well, facebook never was a professional network. It started out as the 'get me a date' context, but is now solidly in the 'family' context. Problem is? it uses my real name. Like most people, I've chosen to use my real name in the business context, so I've now got bleedthrough.

(I mean, for me, that bleedthrough isn't going to get me thrown in jail- it's mostly about having to deal with two sets of inboxes with dramatically different priorities. This would be a much bigger deal if i was sharing family secrets I didn't want generally known in my professional context, or something like that.)

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#78

Post by johnjlocke » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:39 AM UTC

foobarbazqux wrote: post #70

graue wrote: 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…

> And so, every few weeks it seems, we get these posts from some techie who believes that his (it's always a man) experiences with social media are universal. On the other hand, technical people are like rats. They're the first to pile on to fresh meat (there was even a prominent website by this name...), and they're the first to flee when the place is burning down.

Having an original opinion is a dangerous thing...mmm, boy.

Fitting in with your surroundings is still a function of the lizard brain, is it not?

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#79

Post by weavie » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:42 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #53

nostromo wrote: post #51

Lately I've noticed something odd. When I find a story I find interesting, I email it to some of my closest friends and we talk about it in email. It feels very 2003, but it works and feels more private and intimate. Similarly, when I take a picture I want to share with my family, I sms it to them. Facebook is still great, but it's different than what it used to be. It's (for me) evolved into my less-close friends' v…

I do the same thing. I have different groups of people and just talk over email threads. Works far better than G+ or FB.

Likewise. So much for people saying email is broken and outdated. It's the one medium I've been using for 20 years now and keep coming back to.

Re: The Facebook experiment has failed

#80

Post by brunorsini » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 7:43 AM UTC

I disagree with the article's point of view. There's much to be improved on Facebook, starting with more options for customizing the feed, but to say it's doomed or "just doesn't work" because of irrelevant content is silly and elitist.

Even staring at uninteresting content on Facebook from time to time serves a fundamental human need to socialize, to see what others are up to. Hardcore Randians might disagree but life isn't all about narrowly/subjectively-defined "progress", after all. Some people just like to live and to escape a little bit every once in a while, and checking what one's peers are up to is a great way to do just that.