I think every adult who uses FB is aware of this and they don't care. FB users self-select for people who don't care that a company productizes them.
Facebook – You are the Product
181–190 of 321 posts
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#182I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.
Well... As someone who has moved to various countries and across continents a few times over the last three decades, I can hardly find another medium that allows me to keep up with friends and family across many countries and time zones easily. Before Facebook I created and/or used e-mail aliases, e-mail groups, forums, file hosting services, etc. to share our story with friends and family. Facebook makes it much sim…
Well, I moved over the last years across several time-zones and continents. There are people that I knew back then and lost contact now. Do I care if they got babies, found a new job, like/dislike Trump, or are doing Toga on the beach ? No, I don't. I moved away. Having that knowledge does not make my life better or worse in any way. I can get the illusion that we are still in contact, but in reality I will never move back to these places. So why should I care?
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And that, in fact, _does_ makes it hard to avoid using facebook without being left out. I think you might mean _fear_ of being left out...friends will find other ways to contact you.
I don't think this is true. We always have that moment at parties, "Where's Kyle? Oh shit, he deleted his facebook and didn't see the invite, did anybody text him to tell him?!" No, we didn't, because 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook.
Those aren't your friends buddy.
>No, we didn't, because 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook.
My friends will actively invite me (I don't use facebook) to events if they want me there.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
So tell me, how do i replace around 5 different group chats i have on messenger which can have anywhere between 5-10 people in each chat? Music events that i go to are exclusively promoted on facebook. How do you recommend i find out about these events so that i can get a cheaper ticket price? if anyone wants to organize a plan that has more than 8 people, facebook groups make it much much easier. I personally hate f…
It's not that hard, you've just forgotten how to do these things without Facebook. >I personally hate facebook's mobile apps and some it's policies ( Internet.org comes 1st to my mind), but it's hard to completely stop using it. Try it! Deactivate your account for a week. Do it again later for two weeks. Maybe for a month. When you learn how to live without it, delete it.
I just rejoined facebook. I call it giving in again, but really, I see a lot more of what's going on in the city than I could otherwise. There are some websites that try to fill this gap (sites like Meetup or do512.com) and physical bulletin boards at the coffee shops, but FB is by FAR the easiest, and sometimes the only, way to find out about things.
And yeah, you can text, you can call, but "if" everyone is on facebook, it's a lot easier. I still have friends texting, but esp. for bigger group events, Fb is "just there" for most people. It's useful to be a part of that.
I don't like it, I don't like their views on destroying privacy or discouraging pseudonyms, and I wish there was something that was better at Facebook than Facebook, but there isn't.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point I'm making is thus: if you acknowledge that Facebook is a bad influence on your life but you feel stuck with it, here's a low risk strategy for dipping your toes into life without it that you can try out. I don't spend hours managing my social contacts and calendars and I still feel connected with my family and my friends without Facebook. I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patt…
>I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit. I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store. "It is legal to hunt. There's nothing stopping you from going into the woods, killing a deer, and salting its meat other than your own dependency on the conveniences of…
>I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store.
Well, a grocery store isn't really harmful in the way Facebook is. Grocery stores aren't tracking you in every other store you go to and selling that information to the highest bidder, they aren't tracking when you're asleep and awake and everything you use on your phone and they aren't designed to keep you addicted and in the store for as many of your waking hours as possible. You could point out that they might do things like put sugary foods in prominent places but you can always exercise self control and go to the healthier choice - but there's no equivalent Facebook "lite:. Even if grocery stores were all of these things it'd be a lot more reasonable to suggest the farmer's market before hunting. Facebook is demonstrably harmful, grocery stores are not.
>I'm curious what era you grew up in - were you around when literally the only way to get a hold of someone was hope they're home for a phone call? It sucked.
I'm 25 years old, and I definitely lived through and remember a lot of time when the internet was not ubiquitous and calling your friends up was the best way to reach them (I remember the rise of texting, too). It really wasn't bad at all.
>Back then, my only friends could be the ones that went to my highschool, or lived in my neighborhood. In a city like Houston, that's quite the restriction - my sister can have friends from all over the city, as far as Pasadena or even Sugarland! Impossible when I was a kid.
I don't use Facebook today and I still have friends around the world. Hell, in two weeks I'm flying out to Tokyo and crashing on a friend's couch for two weeks and seeing a concert - and we managed to arrange that without Facebook.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No matter what I do, several activities and groups I want to be a part of are only advertised and organized on facebook. It's not within my power to change that. It is. You have the power to choose what you want to be a part of. And these groups have more members than yourself - people who you can ask to help you stay up to date on meetings and such.
I'm sorry, but get real. People use technology because it assists and speeds up areas of their life. For many people, facebook far and away is the most convenient way to manage their social life simply because they have the greatest adoption within their social groups. Yes, we could "write someone a letter in the mail instead" or "ask a friend about the events on facebook" but that would defeat the point for the vast…
The problem is that those assistance & speed-up effects are directly tangible, but the addictiveness, echo chamber, and privacy effects aren't quite so apparent.
It's not a clear net positive just because of those conveniences, and there are no current "solutions" to give as everything you list is far more relevant to network effects than technical feature set. (e.g. in the past, using Facebook made you an outlier, why not just use email lists/myspace/phone calls/etc like everyone else?) A path to an alternative would be through Facebook collapsing (unlikely on their own), another social media site out-marketing Facebook, or establishing your own small networking effect under different assumptions.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#187I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.
Well... As someone who has moved to various countries and across continents a few times over the last three decades, I can hardly find another medium that allows me to keep up with friends and family across many countries and time zones easily. Before Facebook I created and/or used e-mail aliases, e-mail groups, forums, file hosting services, etc. to share our story with friends and family. Facebook makes it much sim…
You can use a blog.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry - I want to make clear that the point of sharing this article on HN is not to give credit to who came up with this concept. I simply want to start (or continue) discourse on this particular subject. To be honest, this isn't even just about Facebook, I'm sure you could have the same argument about the majority of today's tech companies who are commoditizing information about users and using that to monetize. Gen…
A universal system of micro-payments could help change the system or at least provide support to alternative systems. I want to pay for things I use to support the creator and to signal that it is valuable. Unfortunately, all the efforts in creating micro-payments have failed (in the US?). Seems to me this is a place where the controller of the local currency (in the US, the Fed/Federal government) should set up a sy…
It would have to be an opt-out system, like advertising is (blockers), otherwise profit from micropayments wouldn't accumulate to anything sensible.
Arguably it doesn't even matter () because it's more profitable to run advertising along with donations/micropayments to diversify revenue streams. This also doesn't solve the issue of views as currency and the optimizations it drags along.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is true. We always have that moment at parties, "Where's Kyle? Oh shit, he deleted his facebook and didn't see the invite, did anybody text him to tell him?!" No, we didn't, because 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook.
Those aren't your friends buddy. >No, we didn't, because 99% of our friends use the very useful party organizing app with integrated chat and picture sharing, Facebook. My friends will actively invite me (I don't use facebook) to events if they want me there.
And here we see the mismatch between the two camps:
Sure, [good|strong|old|pick your adjective] friends will contact you regardless of your facebook involvement.
But there are plenty of acquaintances, groups, events and whatnot that only get organized or contacted on facebook.
And even so, why would you put the extra burden on your friends to contact you in a special way? Why wouldn't you make it easy for them to contact you?
If I live on a mountain, 1,000 miles from everyone, people--even my friends--don't invite me to their parties because they don't think I'm available. I have isolated myself, and people take social cues from that. People also take clues from social isolation.
I'm reminded of when I set my mother up for email. She really didn't think she needed it or would want it, "Getting a stamp just isn't that hard." But the fact of the matter is that the lower friction method of communication enabled her to be in contact with many, many more people. Facebook is even lower friction than that.
"Those aren't your friends" ignores too many realities of life.
Re: Facebook – You are the Product
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit. I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store. "It is legal to hunt. There's nothing stopping you from going into the woods, killing a deer, and salting its meat other than your own dependency on the conveniences of…
>I feel like if I applied the logic you're using here for that, I could say the same thing about buying food in a store. Well, a grocery store isn't really harmful in the way Facebook is. Grocery stores aren't tracking you in every other store you go to and selling that information to the highest bidder, they aren't tracking when you're asleep and awake and everything you use on your phone and they aren't designed to…
Apparently your social circles don't use facebook as much as other people's do. That's great that you can make it work for you. But don't project your social world onto every one else's.
Also, I keep seeing the, "Facebook isn't worth the tradeoff" argument coming up. That may be true, but again, that is a different claim than, "It is easy to live without it."
re: Your note below that you are suggesting others give it a try:
I did that for years. I counted on getting invites via text message or email. I organized things myself without it. I really did give it a go. I still missed out on way more than I wanted to.
I finally joined facebook about six months ago. I'm very careful about what I share, both with other facebook users and the company itself.
I hate many things about facebook. But what I can't deny is that I am much more connected with many more people than I was before. There is no comparison.