Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#31

Post by oswego » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

I created an account back in 2005. It started out being a great way to re-connect with friends that I had lost track of and then to keep in touch. I deleted my account two years later for the following reasons.

1. I had come to believe FB couldn't be trusted with my data.

2. The more friends I gained the worse the experience became. It went from people showing their vacation photos, which I was ok with, to a stream of meaningless nonsense that I didn't want to see. I.e Yeah, OK, you had a coke at lunch, but should I really care?

3. It became an unpleasant chore having to keep on top of even the valid activity.

It's worth noting that in the last year of use I just put a status up declaring that I no longer actively used Facebook so please contact via email instead, but the distrust of Facebook grew to a point where I ultimately decided to delete my account.

I'll never go back, and I hear they're full of ads now.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#32

Post by Mr_OK » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 11:27 PM UTC

FB is a marketing tool that is operated by a company that want's to make money.

I decided to take the marketing in my own hands and now have more control over it and reach the right people.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#33

Post by johnnewell » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 11:30 PM UTC

keville wrote: post #29

johnnewell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fastest way to fan out messages efficiently between a group is through one node that is always online. I think no decentralized architecture can be more efficient compared to a centralized system. Again, a social network only needs to know whom to send your message to and need not know about the contents of the message, If USPS opened our letters, would we argue for a decentralized architecture where we individua…

> The fastest way to fan out messages efficiently between a group is through one node that is always online. I am curious to know what you're basing this statement on --"Fast" and "efficient" are not necessarily related. (For instance, there seems to have been an explosion of decentralized message-queueing mechanisms available for coordinating distributed software systems. A centralized system can suffer from efficie…

Routing messages between peers in a decentralized system need to take into account that both senders and receivers could be online and offline at multiple times.

This means the storage location of the messages you are supposed to receive could change often, making retrieving messages a two step process, looking up the current online location and then retrieving messages. The place to lookup messages is fixed in a centralized system, hence you'll receive messages faster.

This can definitely be sped up by increasing the number of times the messages are replicated in the decentralized system and a constant shuffling of the message between nodes to ensure it is always available for the receiver when they come online, hence inefficient.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#34

Post by kazinator » Wed, Mar 25, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

johnnewell wrote: post #19

kazinator wrote: post #16

Never joined. Facebook has too much central control. Social networking should be based on a decentralized system of independent nodes such that no single authority owns the whole damn thing and makes everyone obey their rules, and has everyone's personal info. (And all protocols documented, and implementations open-sourced, needless to say).

The fastest way to fan out messages efficiently between a group is through one node that is always online. I think no decentralized architecture can be more efficient compared to a centralized system. Again, a social network only needs to know whom to send your message to and need not know about the contents of the message, If USPS opened our letters, would we argue for a decentralized architecture where we individua…

In this case, the entity analogous to the USPS controls the paper, pen and stuffing of envelopes.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#35

Post by nolimits1228 » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 12:15 AM UTC

Everything has it's time. Facebook had a nice run but something will inevitably replace it. Social beings will constantly be craving what's next. Exclusivity amongst college students was what ignited the fire, but younger generations are gravitating away from this platform day by day because it's too complex.

P.S. - people are lazy, and FB makes people work. It's cluttered and doesn't have a core value anymore that Twitter or Instagram or SnapChat can't already deliver. Best bet is to keep the acquisitions going to eliminate competition.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#36

Post by monknomo » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 12:47 AM UTC

I still have an account, but I don't really use it anymore. Facebook is just not very fun anymore. It's busy, sort of confusing and I never seem to get things written on my wall, or see what people are up to right now. I see popular stuff that is non-chronological, and I'm a little fuzzy on whether walls are a thing anymore

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#37

Post by computerjunkie » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 1:08 AM UTC

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #5

I have a facebook account, but I don't use it anymore. I hate to see how awesome other people's life seems. I can't stop but get envious and disappointed. Yet, I kept coming back for more. I had the unhealthy compulsion to keep scrolling through the happy stuff, while feeling bad for my "mundane" living. I stopped using facebook. I feel much better.

Agreed. I think its not about hate and envy, but the "my life is perfect" image shown to you when in actual fact everybody has their own insecurities or are going through tough family, friends and relationship (personal and professional) issues. We all know life has its ups and downs, but we pretend like the downs never exist.

The majority of the population never speak about the "bad" things happening in their lives, because it makes you vulnerable which is a feeling we refuse to show in todays world.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#38

Post by computerjunkie » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 1:19 AM UTC

I used to be a heavy facebook user. Now I log in once a week for messages.

Privacy was not the major contributing factor of me stopping the usage of facebook, but how "nosy" I felt in other peoples lives when I don't even talk to them. The more I used facebook the more alone I felt.

Another issue was the cluttered feel to it. The addition of a twitter clone feed made everything feel like an "all-in-one" solution.

After going on a month long without Facebook, whenever I met my colleages, I would have a lot more to say to them and genuinely ask questions about whats going on in their lives. I default alot less to my phone after I meet with friends.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#39

Post by dougpetro » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 1:33 AM UTC

I only go on for college club/team notifications, other than that, I am off it completely.

My news feed is polluted with ads and garbage news that have been shared by people I hardly know. I've added so many 'friends' that are hardly acquaintances now, and I don't feel like deleting them, because my real friends hardly use Facebook either so its not worth it.

An additional annoyance is notifications for things that I don't care about: invites to facebook games (why are they even a thing?), notification of friends activity, and updates from pages I liked years ago. Its just become more of a hassle.

Re: Ask HN: Why are you off Facebook?

#40

Post by jpetersonmn » Thu, Mar 26, 2015, 2:35 AM UTC

I deleted my facebook account about a year ago. I got so sick of seeing all the whining, political arguing, hoax type posts, etc... and if I blocked all of the people that did that stuff, I wouldn't have anyone left on there to follow. I don't miss it at all.