Why I Canceled My Facebook Account • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Canceled My Facebook Account

#81

Post by cmos » Mon, May 03, 2010, 2:36 AM UTC

julio_the_squid wrote: post #74

cmos wrote: post #29

I have never joined facebook, and am thankful for this. But I was suckered into joining linkedin, and when I saw they had uploaded my contacts list from my gmail account, I had to leave. Still not quite sure how they did that.

As you may know, they send all of your contacts who aren't members messages saying ' invited you to join their network on (linkedin|facebook|twitter)'. Sometimes they even mail to 'remind' you again a month or two later. I don't think users necessarily realize these messages are being sent ostensibly on their behalf. In my view these large, successful companies are growing their user bases through spam.

I know - I had family members asking me 'what this linkedin thing was'.

That's when I quit.

(I don't remember giving them my password, however the link to send someone an invite is actually a link to send EVERYONE and invite, and apparently that includes the contact list they uploaded (or from my point of view, stole))

Re: Why I Canceled My Facebook Account

#82

Post by skord » Mon, May 03, 2010, 3:33 AM UTC

frazerb wrote: post #23

philk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB also seems to get less useful over time as you add more people. Initially, when you have a few people you know really well and get on with, you can post quite freely knowing that it's unlikely to come back and bite you. Later, as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured and it winds up feeling like you're running some sort of discount PR agency.

This is an interesting departure from Metcalfe's Law [ the value of the network is proportionate to the square of the number of nodes in the network ]. Perhaps Metcalfe's Law applies up to a certain size, and then tails off thereafter. There is a limit on the number of people that us humans can reasonably be expected to have friendships with. I have a feeling that it is substantially smaller than the number of 'frien…

Hardly a departure, the value is substantial for all those but the user.

The friendship limit you speak of has been hypothesized by an anthropologist (Robin Dunbar) as being in direct correlation to neocortex size. More recently, it's been called "the monkeysphere".

Re: Why I Canceled My Facebook Account

#83

Post by kareemm » Mon, May 03, 2010, 4:22 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #73

foldr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a bad person." I think the OP was saying we should be cautious in making judgments of the second sort.

> There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a bad person." I disagree. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. If John repeatedly does bad things, then John is a bad person. How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

we tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, but ourselves by our intent, not our actions.

that is to say that you sit in harsh judgement of mark zuckerberg only seeing his actions without truly understanding his intentions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

Re: Why I Canceled My Facebook Account

#84

Post by motters » Mon, May 03, 2010, 10:53 AM UTC

codemechanic wrote: post #61

motters wrote: post #59

The main issue from this and other similar articles about facebook which I've read seems to be the lack of control that users have over how their information is used and who it's given to. I still believe that the solution to all of these problems would be an open source peer-to-peer version of facebook, where you have complete ownership and control over what information you make available and who gets to see it.

checkout http://www.tonido.com .

Looks nice, but I'm not sure how open source this is. It appears to have an SDK under Apache, but the rest is vague.

This also raises alarm bells:

http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=548

If there's a version of this which is completely open source and on a plug, I'd buy that as a facebook replacement.

Re: Why I Canceled My Facebook Account

#85

Post by roedog » Mon, May 03, 2010, 3:27 PM UTC

yason wrote: post #62

philk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB also seems to get less useful over time as you add more people. Initially, when you have a few people you know really well and get on with, you can post quite freely knowing that it's unlikely to come back and bite you. Later, as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured and it winds up feeling like you're running some sort of discount PR agency.

as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured One can't live like this for too long, you have to be yourself instead of a filtered, cleaned-up politically correct version of yourself.

Right, and if I'm not comfortable with doing so on facebook, then I'll go be myself elsewhere.