Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email • Hacker News Board

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#131

Post by zapzupnz » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

ahje wrote: post #119

bigbugbag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how facebook onws you and keeps you from leaving: fear of missing out. AFAIK most people who removed facebook from their life got an improvement out of it and fromt he feedback some of them gave, they did miss a few of those events but it did not matter much to them and the others they got invited or learn about through their newly rebuilt social links and did not miss.

I tried, and ended up losing contact with pretty much all of my family. Facebook is so deeply integrated with their daily lives that they consider e-mails, phone calls and SMS'es to be an unneccesary hassle. After a while I had to get a new Facebook account, because people kept messaging my wife over messenger, asking her to forward the messages to me.

This. When you try to tell people this, especially here on HN, they say "well, people should just change to suit you or they're not worth contacting". The arrogance of the technically minded can be astounding; it took ten years to get our acquaintances on Facebook, they're not going to change just because we say so.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#132

Post by zapzupnz » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

rooleongai wrote: post #111

社交媒体带来的碎片化阅读真的已经影响到了我们的生活，我现在开始有意识的避开即时社交平台，重要的事情会通过邮件解决

In case anybody's wondering, Google Translate says:

The fragmented reading brought by social media has really affected our lives. I am now consciously avoiding the instant social platform, and important things will be solved by mail.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#133

Post by tinus_hn » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #62

wyattpeak wrote: post #61

There's one aspect of Facebook which seems to always be ignored by these "deleting Facebook" posts and it confuses me. I've never really scrolled through the frontpage, I don't look at people's posts and photos, happy to message them through text or WhatsApp, but I absolutely need the events. Without them, I'd lose so much touch with all but my closest friends. People tend to respond to this concern with "if they don…

I have been on Facebook for a decade and can count on one hand the number of events I cared about that I was invited to on FB. Maybe this is because I'm "old" (late 30s). Or maybe some friend groups simply do not use FB in this way. Most events I'm invited to are via email, evite, or text.

If more than a few people I. Your group are not on Facebook people will invite using alternate means because otherwise they won’t be there, of course. That’s the network effect.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#134

Post by Markoff » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

why would you even share photos through horrible Facebook compression? i shared them with my family through Google photos before abandoning Google services, later sharing through WhatsApp (yes i know, horrible compression) and going to finally move to Signal since they started now to support sharing of photos/videos (though only in beta), until now you could share only one photo or video making it useless

also the people i wanted to stay in touch are anyway on WhatsApp, signal or at worst can email them, so i don't see any added value in Facebook

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#135

Post by Gys » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

schnevets wrote: post #129

Gys wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore.") You mean, like a post on FB ? Or Tweeting ? Readable for all ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ ? Who very likely are not really interested in your message ?

I think this is the strangest appeal of social media - the devaluation of your message. I'm not inundating anyone if I take a lousy picture of fireworks; write an unremarkable status; or check in from my preferred, uninteresting eating establishment. It may show on a feed, or someone who visits my profile may see it, but it's a passive broadcast. An e-mail is intended to be read, a "post" is designed to be ignored.

> a "post" is designed to be ignored

I cannot imagine everyone thinks that why. Why even take the time to do it ? Are billions of people really that bored ? Then surely its time for humanity to end ;-)

Disclaimer: I am not on FB or Twitter (or whatever) - too busy otherwise, probably

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#136

Post by marcusjt » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

wyattpeak wrote: post #73

gnicholas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been on Facebook for a decade and can count on one hand the number of events I cared about that I was invited to on FB. Maybe this is because I'm "old" (late 30s). Or maybe some friend groups simply do not use FB in this way. Most events I'm invited to are via email, evite, or text.

That makes sense, I wonder if it is just a generational thing (late 20s). While I'm aware of evites, I've never received one, and my circle of friends seem to basically set up a Facebook event and then forget about it. I don't think I've ever received an invite to a casual event over text/email/phone either, except in conversations of the "Hey, what are you up to?"/"Going to a party, want to come?" ilk.

Me too - I'm 38, live & work in London, still go out 4 or 5 nights a week (especially weekends) and everyone I'm "friends" with runs their social life almost exclusively through Facebook, as do I, with the exception of dates and just catching up with friends on a 1-2-1 basis (99% of which is arranged via WhatsApp).

So if I left Facebook I'd either never know about any of what's happening, or everyone would have to go out of their way to invite me especially, which I don't see as a viable long term thing for me or for them, over time they would increasingly forget to invite me - I've seen it happen with others who've tried to leave and had to return to get back in the loop!

Plus even if I posted to say that I was leaving Facebook my post wouldn't be seen by everyone so they wouldn't know, and if I disabled my account the post would disappear altogether.

So I'm locked in for the foreseeable future out of social necessity.

PS - I've never heard of Evite, until I just realised I thought it was being used as shorthand for an electronic invite, not an actual website.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#137

Post by astrobe_ » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

kkarakk wrote: post #91

astrobe_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also people have been been trained to misuse email. My coworkers, who are all in IT, can't quote correctly. I am bewildered by the level of ignorance of what email has to offered shown by some comments here. How to stop receiving messages? Well, just make a filter if you don't want to hurt the sender's feelings. I blame it on the webmail wave that offered to the newbie Internet users of the nineties poor interfaces t…

and they're not going to untrain themselves because you want them to. you're just going to get tagged as the email spammer

Well we are back to square one: people grow discontent with social media (addiction, privacy violations, fake news), some guy suggests that the old tech from the 20th century can cover their actual needs pretty well.

I personally believe people should transition out from social-media-everything because social media are to society what pollution is to climate.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#138

Post by nsgi » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

crumpets wrote: post #109

a3n wrote: post #95

I once took a picture, and offered to email it to my younger co-worker. (I'm old.) He paused, and said "Email? I don't remember the last time I used email. Why don't you text it to me?" There are people who just don't use email, and not because they're not tech savvy.

Given that it’s required to sign up for online billing and most online services, I think your younger coworker either doesn’t understand how to set it up on his/her phone or was just straight up lying because the email address was embarrassing or some other reason to hide it.

I rarely check my personal email because of the volume of spam and other noise I receive, so if a friend tried to contact me that way I probably wouldn't get it. I don't set up email notifications on my phone for that reason.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#139

Post by simplecomplex » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #38

simplecomplex wrote: post #31

My family does monthly email updates mainly because not everyone is on Facebook. No noise. Just what's new with everyone, once in a while. There's no ads, no posts about what they had for lunch, no reposts about their political opinions, etc. We don't even use mailing lists. We usually just reply to the last one, and I have a contact group with everyone in the family.

Who is "everyone" in your family? According to ancestry.com that's an absurdly large group.

Me, siblings, parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and a cousin.

Re: Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email

#140

Post by wasdfff » Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

wyattpeak wrote: post #61

There's one aspect of Facebook which seems to always be ignored by these "deleting Facebook" posts and it confuses me. I've never really scrolled through the frontpage, I don't look at people's posts and photos, happy to message them through text or WhatsApp, but I absolutely need the events. Without them, I'd lose so much touch with all but my closest friends. People tend to respond to this concern with "if they don…

My local friends just don’t use events. I don’t think I’ve been invited to an event on Facebook that wasn’t mass 300+ person spam in the past 5 years. If it’s someones birthday coming up, I’ll get a text and find out what bar we are going to. If it’s a professional event, I’m getting an email about it. I don’t see what the events page covers beyond these mass mailer commercial events that I’m going to ignore anyway. For things happening around town that are actually interesting, there’s always the city subreddit.