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Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

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Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#11

Post by duncan_bayne »

bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

I'm busy shutting down a throwaway FB account that I used to sign up to Spotify back in the day.

They don't make it easy.

The process, according to Spotify support, is:

+ Create a new Spotify account

+ Contact Spotify support to migrate playlists etc. across.

+ Cancel my paid subscription on the old account.

+ Create a new paid subscription on the new account.

+ Migrate my family members onto the new account.

This is reminiscent of Microsoft's strategies back in the 90s, to make it incredibly difficult to ship a PC w/o DOS (and later, Windows).

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#12

Post by austenallred »

bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

What rationale could I possibly give someone to stop using Facebook that would convince them to forgo all of the value they get from it?

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#13

Post by laurieg »

bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

I would like to stop, but the devil is in the details.

Facebook is used for many social and business events. I get a lot of work via contacts that come through facebook. Withought it I'm certain I would miss out on some of these. I'd also miss out on keeping up with family abroad.

Do you have any suggestions?

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#14

Post by laurieg »

bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

I would like to stop, but the devil is in the details.

Facebook is used for many social and business events. I get a lot of work via contacts that come through facebook. Withought it I'm certain I would miss out on some of these. I'd also miss out on keeping up with family abroad.

Do you have any suggestions?

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#15

Post by onewaystreet »

bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

> I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant

What makes this one of those times?

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

onewaystreet wrote: post #15
bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

> I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant What makes this one of those times?

OP might have meant when Facebook exhibits another attribute closely resembling a skinner box [1]. Or the use of their platform as a world scale behavioral analysis experiment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

"An operant conditioning chamber permits experimenters to study behavior conditioning (training) by teaching a subject animal to perform certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to specific stimuli, such as a light or sound signal. When the subject correctly performs the behavior, the chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward. In some cases, the mechanism delivers a punishment for incorrect or missing responses."

https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/4/10708590/facebook-google-a...

"Facebook made its Android app crash to test your loyalty"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12161461/Facebook-addiction-...

"Facebook addiction ‘activates same part of the brain as cocaine’"

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911...

"Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and anti-social behavior"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...

"Facebook Manipulated 689,003 Users' Emotions For Science"

https://twitter.com/niftyc/status/482925976251154432

"#facebook emotional contagion study effect sizes are small--probably nobody was driven to suicide. #jokingnotjoking http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full …"

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#17

Post by jbigelow76 »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #11
bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

I'm busy shutting down a throwaway FB account that I used to sign up to Spotify back in the day. They don't make it easy. The process, according to Spotify support, is: + Create a new Spotify account + Contact Spotify support to migrate playlists etc. across. + Cancel my paid subscription on the old account. + Create a new paid subscription on the new account. + Migrate my family members onto the new account. This is…

Was there a time, and if so was this throwaway FB account part of it, when you could only sign up to Spotify with a FB account? I was a paying member of Spotify for about two years and my account wasn't tied to FB but Spotify had already been around for a few years prior.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#18

Post by aaron-lebo »

austenallred wrote: post #12
bbarn wrote: post #7

I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant: Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.

What rationale could I possibly give someone to stop using Facebook that would convince them to forgo all of the value they get from it?

There's obvious abstract reasons why they should stop using it:

1. Facebook knows about all of your interactions on Facebook, and they probably know what you are buying and what sites you visit through tracking mechanisms. In real life we call those people stalkers.

2. What utility are they really getting? Is keeping up with every part of your friend's life (or the good parts they show you) really worth the stress and anxiety of feeling like you are missing out? It's fake utility. People somehow existed for something like 300,000 years without this utility, so what value is really there?

That being said, it's designed to get people addicted and the immediate "utility" is a lot stronger than any abstract worries, so there's probably nothing you can say.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#19

Post by clusmore »

>But by making Safety Check a default expectation Facebook flips the norms of societal behavior and suddenly no one can feel safe unless everyone has manually checked the Facebook box marked “safe”.

I'm not buying this statement. Where is the evidence of this? The article features two tweets from nondescript people stating they think the feature spreads unnecessary fear, but features no tweets from people who actually felt unnecessary fear. Are there any cases of people who felt afraid because their loved ones didn't check in even though they could have? Otherwise to me this argument is just speculation.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#20

Post by whatevthrow31 »

Ok, I had to make a throwaway for this because apparently its a heated debate.

Why does everything Facebook do have to be so heavily criticized?

Safety Check is a wonderful feature. If I remember correctly, it started off as an internal hackathon project that got turned into a full feature. They get shit if they turn it on (here), and if they don't turn it on (past tragedies where they failed to turn it on).

Why does everything Facebook do turn into a riot? After years in the industry, 95% of things that are "bad" that come out of big companies end up being well meaning and just look malicious without context. Hanlon's razor is real.

Yeah, Facebook has to fund all this somehow. Yeah, they are going to make their ad space extremely valuable with all the information they have. They don't sell your raw data. They sell access to you like the rest of the industry.

Those creepy ads that you saw based on some conversation you had? Turns out that they're NOT listening to your mic or whatever. It's either confirmation bias or something you're not thinking about.

Those friends that they suggest with a new account? Turns out your friends posted pictures of you on Facebook, and Facebook knows how to do facial recognition.

It feels like everything Facebook is overblown on HN. What am I missing?

Edit: I should have said this originally, but I'm a former Facebook employee, now at another big tech company. I try not to be too controversial in writing, which is why I made a throwaway.

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