Goodbye Facebook.

http://techsavvybutterfly.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/goodbye-facebook/

by jackyyappp • 14 years ago

227 152 14 years ago

techsavvybutterfly.wordpress.com

nicky0• 14 years ago

It seems more and more people are realising it: if you value your friendships, get off Facebook.

Kliment2• 14 years ago

I wrote something about this several years ago, when I got tired of repeating the reasons I wasn't on Facebook. Here it is if you're interested: http://everything2.com/title/Facebook+destroys+real+relation...

lathamcity• 14 years ago

I didn't make it through two paragraphs. Can't I read a sentence without being linked to three other web pages?

richardv• 14 years ago

Aside from the fact that this post is mostly pointless, it's also totally misinformed.

The OP started off by stating his reasons for dropping FB in this "experiment".. namely losing touch with the people for which he originally signed up under.

But he clearly doesn't engage with them if he's not seeing their updates.

Your social graph needs fine tuning. It's like any good bayesian filter, it learns over time what interests you. You can of course give it a push in the right direction by putting people in acquaintances, or hiding specific people from your timeline. (People in your acquaintances don't show up as often in your newsfeed).

This post just shows that you most likely don't understand the full feature set of Facebook and how to best optimize your social graph (not that this is your fault). Facebook has some of the best machine learning for figuring out what is relevant to me. I'd probably argue that you click on too many memes and don't interact with your friends as much if this is what it is serving you.

Don't drop Facebook, just learn how to use it. I personally don't use Facebook for interacting with that many friends. I have about 96% of my friends as acquantiances. I have a small set of about 10 people as friends, and I subscribe to about 100~ people. My newsfeed is so rich with really good content.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

I don't want to 'optimise my social graph'. Especially given it used to work properly and feed me the relevant content that I wanted about a year ago.

You can try defend the social graph, how much Facebook has done to improve it and so on, but for a lot of people it doesn't actually achieve what it used to, and that's an issue.

johnchristopher2• 14 years ago

Isn't the fact we add too many contacts the core issue ? And then it turns out that it's easier to look at funny stuff posted by anyone than diving emotionnaly into the life turmoils of our real close friends ? I firmly believe the simple solution is to have more than one account.

AznHisoka2• 14 years ago

Yes you can dePend on a soulless money making machine to optimize your relationships... And hope they get it right

Or you can just take control of your relationships and nourish them the old fashioned way: calling, email, face to face, etc.

deelowe2• 14 years ago

This argument could be applied to any technical progress.

Email for example: "Sure you could dePend on a soulless money making machine to optimize your communications... And hope it does it right. Or you can just take control of the situation and do it the old fashioned way: letters and stamps."

yuvadam• 14 years ago

Why do I need to invest time in "fine tuning my social graph"? What's in it for me? And is it even my social graph?

Facebook is not about "helping you connect to your friends", it's about buying eyeball-time and pumping commercials into your brain.

Any person that has not been completely brainwashed can see the fallacy in this kind of system.

pyre• 14 years ago

  > it's about buying eyeball-time and pumping
  > commercials into your brain.

You've just defined television. I think that you need to broaden your definition of Facebook if you want people to listen to you point. Facebook is more than just the local television company.

charliepark2• 14 years ago

This is actually really interesting. There's a way to fine-tune my newsfeed? (I'm not trolling here; I've honestly never heard about this.) Facebook has provided very little actual value to me, mainly because the signal-to-noise ratio has been so low.

I've seen those options under my friends' accounts ("lists", right? "close friends", "acquaintances", etc.?) ... is that where I'd do that? Is that something they see (I don't want to offend people by demoting them to "acquaintances", but if I can do that without them seeing, that'd be great).

Honestly, Facebook would be a lot more valuable to me if they had some sort of basic tutorial explaining what's going on with it and how I can make it work for me. As it is, all I use it for is as a slightly glorified birthday reminder.

If you have any resources to that end (how to tune your feed), I'd love to hear about them.

charliepark2• 14 years ago

For anyone looking for info on this, this is a good post: How do I use lists to organize my friends? (https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=200538509990389)

Basically: you can move friends to "acquaintances", they won't see that status change, and their posts will only rarely show up in your feed.

chrislomax2• 14 years ago

I don't know why you have so much hate for the comment you made but I couldn't agree more. Facebook is a tool, all tools need to be guided by yourself, they never just work. Equally one tool will not work for everyone so sometimes you have to adapt that tool.

People commenting it's just a money making machine, where do they make money off me? I don't click on anything I don't want to and I'm not forced to buy stuff.

I log into Facebook, see a picture of my friends baby, I comment, we have a laugh then I arrange to go round and see them. I don't interact any more or any less than I would over the phone etc

I see updates from the people I want to see updates from, if someone writes a load of crap all the time, I just filter them out.

I never understand all the hate people have for Facebook, constant jibes about privacy. If you as a person are putting information on Facebook that is that private then you are the idiot, not Facebook. If you don't want people to see private pictures of your children, simple, don't upload them!

Everything needs a revenue stream of some sort, does everyone think Apple do what they do because they want to make everyone happy??

Back shortly, just going to check out my friends wedding pics that everyone else uploaded and tagged them in.

AznHisoka2• 14 years ago

I agree, FB is a tool.

However, because of the nature of FB, it makes relationships less personal/authentic, as we try to show off our "best self" to others, rather than our real selves. The tool itself encourages this, so instead of adapting to it, for some people it's best to not use it.

It's like eating at a fast food restaurant. Yes, you can adapt to it and order the salads, and healthy dishes.. But noone's forcing you to go there, you can just not go to them in the first place.

jps359• 14 years ago

I agree. Facebook is awesome for keeping in touch with people that I normally wouldn't keep in touch with (people who aren't close friends but are still friends). I've made great friends through it and my news feed always has relevant content. The experience is what you make it. If the OP lost touch with people it's because he made no effort to keep in touch with them. Not to mention the obvious click-bait of his submission... "goodbye facebook"? Please. 900M accounts. They're not going anywhere for some time.

briandear5• 14 years ago

Fuck the social graph.

otterley• 14 years ago

In the early days, the News Feed was a full feed of all updates, much like LiveJournal's friends page. Why can't they return to its previous behavior, subject to the restrictions you specify? (e.g. unsubscribe from app activities).

obituary_latte3• 14 years ago

My problem with fb and the reason I don't use it is simple: principal. I understand the model, and oblige with google (though not g+ as it is pretty quiet in my neck of the woods). But to not only give them the value of my data but also have them go around changing things like registered email without so much as a heads up is a slap in the face. It's like a conceited bus monitor that just goes ahead and "does what's best for me". I'm an adult; I know what email address I prefer to use.

Not only that, but the utter lack of transparency is concerning to say the least. There is this monstrous set of data--PII--that this company holds and who's to say the bus monitor doesn't all of a sudden decide that's it's best for me if they provide this data to Experien. Or to the justice dept.

The real problem is that people are addicted to distraction. Fb offers this droves. So much so that not only are people more than willing to hand over their data, they are willing to hand it over to someone who thinks you don't even deserve to know when they make sweeping changes to which parts of that data are displayed to the world.

/rant

panacea• 14 years ago

I've seen comments such as "How do you know someone doesn't use Facebook? Because they'll tell you".

As if the primary reason you're expressing your dislike for the service in a discussion about it, is because you wish to proclaim smug superiority.

I think it's important for those who dislike the current platform, and are concerned about the future ramifications of it, to speak up in public forums. To state openly that they don't use Facebook for reasons of principal and also, because Facebook's actions have spoken louder than words numerous times and in my opinion, to continue to use the service is like staying with an abusive partner.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

It took me a long time to figure out that you meant "principle" rather than "principal".

For school teachers, perhaps the reason might be principal.

obituary_latte3• 14 years ago

Heh. Meaty fingers and no coffee make HN cell phone posts a rough time.

scott_s• 14 years ago

I saw the email thing as a non-issue - if you're looking at my info on FB, then the easiest way to contact me is on FB. It doesn't bother me that people aren't referred to my Gmail account instead.

obituary_latte3• 14 years ago

Again, it's the principle of it--have the decency to tell people what's up. Same applies for all the privacy and other changes that have happened un-announced and un-explained, not just the email change.

gooddaysir• 14 years ago

Facebook is the new television.

Etab• 14 years ago

Related: "I don't have a Facebook" is the new "I don't have a TV." For some reason, those who either refused to sign up or chose to deactivate their accounts feel the need to share this with everyone everywhere.

briandear5• 14 years ago

And people that do use Facebook feel it their duty to post status messages everytime they take a dump. Who's the real ass here?

chris_wot• 14 years ago

I have to agree with the sentiments here: it seems to me that my Facebook feed is much less useful than it was about a year ago. I don't know what they've done, but it's really not good.

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

Facebook will struggle to make the next leap (IMHO, of course) because there's a disconnect between how users want to use it, and how Facebook wants/needs you to use it.

Outside of the sub-group of individuals who thrive on sharing every aspect of their life, most people want Facebook to be a fancy email. There's all your friends; you can talk with them and literally see what they're up to . And to be honest, the platform is great for that.

Facebook, on the other hand, needs you to be an information sharing and data providing machine, talking about brands and products, all while doing whatever they can to entice (or trick) you into putting your information in the public domain. They want to you be connected with everyone. People are learning that's a lot of work.

The problem is that the more Facebook pushes the latter, the worse the former -- the user experience -- has to get. Nobody wants to stare at ads and feel like they're being "watched" (by both Facebook and other connections) while they "engage" with friends. As the author discovered...it's odd.

malarkeyking2• 14 years ago

Agreed. I think G+ could beat Facebook here as they don't need to directly monetise the service and can provide more of the platform people want. Whether or not they can get to a tipping point of users however is another question.

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

This is probably a generational thing, but I don't care about being watched. If I am, that information doesn't go on Facebook, in an email, in a text, and perhaps even not in a phone call.

Facebook is getting impersonal without a competent list/circles system. I find myself texting or messaging content to people more than posting it on my wall because I want to be selective about who views it.

Sometimes these are stories about the cute girl I talked to at Starbucks or a service I'm loving. Sometimes it's a personal story with little branding value. But I naturally have both types of conversations and so don't see the mutual exclusivity between encouraging conversation and getting data.

Similarly, the problem with friending everyone goes away with a decent lists/circles concept - I add a lot more people on Google+ (granted, I don't post anything there. But I'd like to).

brk• 14 years ago

I'm seeing similar things on Facebook. A group of my friends is in a Facebook group that was originally intended for a business purpose. It is still used for that, but we also frequently post things there that we want to share to a small audience and not broadcast to all Facebook contacts.

brlewis• 14 years ago

I disagree about Facebook potentially struggling because of this disconnect. Facebook can continue to grow by steering users toward doing what Facebook wants while intermittently rewarding them with what users want. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules_of_rein...

Addiction is not proportional to the quality of the user experience.

dbot• 14 years ago

Facebook's user model changed completely when it introduced the news feed. Before that, users spent a lot of time "curating" their profile pages with favorite books, movies, etc., while updating status only occasionally ("dbot is ..."). Visiting someone's page was more like going over and knocking on their door. You would learn a lot about that person and what they've been up to.

Enter the news feed - which was hugely unpopular at first - and is more like walking into a public square, with ads, vendors, and people on soapboxes. Some people don't like to be so public in the way they share, and other people's interesting stuff gets lost in the crowd.

The Facebook of today isn't the one I signed up for, which is fine, but also explains why I use it less now.

neutronicus• 14 years ago

It was always more about photo sharing than talking with my friends. More of a fancy Flickr than a fancy e-mail.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

> I want us to talk. I want a personal email. I want to find a way to share photos in a way that encourages us to talk about them with each other.

Surely you can do this with or without Facebook.

Maybe I'm a unique snowflake but Facebook to me is exactly the opposite of that: it's a way to give a quick (often meaningless) insight into my life, what I'm thinking or what I'm doing. It's a way to share something that maybe someone will be interested in, but probably not. If I share something to Facebook it's not because I want all my friends to see it, it's because I think those that might see it might find value in it and it represents what I'm doing/thinking/enjoying. If I want someone to see something or engage with me in conversation I send them a message.

Facebook isn't a replacement for "normal" communication between friends, it's an extension. The only reason anyone would want to see complaints about someone's life falling apart is the same reason people watch train wrecks of car crashes. They don't care about the individual, they care about the spectacle. Using any one->many communication platform for complaints about life seems misguided.

Maybe https://everyme.com/ would fill the void he has in his life.

itgoon• 14 years ago

Exactly. If it replaces anything, it's because it is more efficient at it. This is all anecdotal, I know...

Since Facebook, my email inbox is almost devoid of "RE:RE:FW:FW" broadcast messages.

I still get plenty of email from family and friends, but they are more selective in what they send. Things that are personal, or detailed, or very specific to me.

I still use my phone a lot, but spend less time telling people how great (or not) my weekend was. If they want to know, they can look. If they want details, they call and ask.

Afal• 14 years ago

Oh boy another internet "experiment" when someone gives up $technology and ends up saying absolutely nothing in their post. I sure do love reading these pretentious pieces of "intellectual" prose.

In fact I shall start an "experiment" myself to see if replacing every instance of "experiment" in these kind of articles with "controversial decision" to see if they read better. I mean it's as if people use the word "experiment" to justify being avant-garde.

Except in this case it's not even a controversial thing. People are leaving facebook for tonnes of reasons (fad has died, not finding its uses any more, don't want to be tied with a system that hoards personal data and sells them off to companies etc). Leaving Facebook isn't an edgy thing to do; not before and not now. Anyone I knew that announced that they're "leaving facebook" end up being rather smugly obnoxious when tech news headlines say "facebook did some things that people don't like. boooo facebook!" saying they "knew all along" and they were obviously smarter and more superior than the regular "tech weenie" still on their facebook.

We all know what the result of this "experiment" is going to be. "My life was significantly improved thanks to not using facebook. Just as I thought! Aren't I clever?". There's no point denying it because that's what they're going to say. Just like I said I'll replace "experiment" with "controversial decision". I already know that I'm going to say "Nope. The posts were not better at all. Told ya!" because I know that when it's something I dislike in the first place I'm going to have a visceral reaction to hate it rather than say doing an ACTUAL experiment which doesn't have this cognitive bias.

And I'm right, am I? I mean I'm not WRONG or something? Please someone validate my beliefs which I portray on the internet. I desperately need this!!!

unimpressive• 14 years ago

> And I'm right, am I? I mean I'm not WRONG or something? Please someone validate my beliefs which I portray on the internet. I desperately need this!!!

I think that was supposed to be ironic. I think. Regardless, that's how it came off to me too. I still have no Facebook account, and I'm not getting one. If you're unhappy just leave, no need to make a big fuss out of it.

basicallydan• 14 years ago

Maybe that's how it came off, but if we look past the "look at me and my controversial decision masquerading as an experiment!" layer, and focus on his reasoning behind the decision: can you relate at all? I can.

"Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook" is one of the phrases I've found myself and my friends saying over the past couple of years, and sometimes I don't like hearing it, even from my own mouth.

Nevertheless, announcing it publicly as an "experiment" - it's debatable whether this has any value or point.

gonehome• 14 years ago

Another week another post about someone leaving facebook.

There is nothing interesting or novel in these posts. All that happens is that the people who have also left facebook find validation in seeing someone else do it so they up vote their story to the front page.

I don't know if it's about individuality or some perceived minority of 'non-facebook' users wanting to band together, but the fact that someone has left facebook is uninteresting.

In addition to this it's made worse by the articles acting as if it's some crowning achievement when all they're doing is limiting their methods of interacting with other people.

sirrealle• 14 years ago

I deleted my Facebook account about 2 years ago. Want to know how it has changed my life? Well, it really hasn't. Sometimes I don't hear about parties / events, but it's usually just an event that I'd either hear about anyway, or would be uninteresting to me in some way. Other than that, no life-changing epiphanies, no extra productivity, no increased level of smugness. Absolutely nothing has changed, and nobody cares. The author of the article may be concerned, thinking their life will change drastically or they will drop off the face of the earth and have to claw their way back to the top of their perceived social food chain, but they'll learn over time that their presence on facebook also does not matter, and they'll have to find another way to tell the world about their thoughts, and hope that people will sign up for an RSS feed to know when they've made new blog posts.

gedrap• 14 years ago

The arguments are valid here, not one more 'Zuck I HATE YOU, remove timeline' when actually timeline does not make any difference unless you are stalking some one every day :))

I like the idea of the news feed filter algorithm. Just implementation is not the best. The only way to 'fix' it is just to change friend status (acquaintance, friend, close friend, etc). But... I am not sure if the algorithm can be improved actually. It determines whether to show or not by how much do you interact with some one on facebook (more or less). And it's the only way to determine whether you might be interested or not. Because believe me, you wouldn't be happy if you could see what everyone is posting if you have 200+ friends.

markessien• 14 years ago

This is what many people use facebook group for. To keep in close contact with a group of like-minded individuals.

MortenK• 14 years ago

I really like the "Share to Facebook" button at the end of the post.

malarkeyking2• 14 years ago

HA HA! I'm not using FB because people don't interact with me and feel my pain. HOWEVER, please show all of your intimate friends my blog post!

Tooluka• 14 years ago

Aren't they automatically added on every internet webpage?:)

crag• 14 years ago

Well the OP is right about one thing: Facebook has become less personal.

I regret accepting old high school/college friends (who I haven't' seen in 25 years), army buds, and family members I didn't even know I had.

Now I post, maybe once every 2 weeks. Usually something safe - like about the current game I'm playing. I don't dare get personal on FB now.

antidoh2• 14 years ago

"I don't dare get personal on FB now."

The irony.

mattgreenrocks2• 14 years ago

Indeed - the more 'connected' we are, the more socialized we're forced to be. Facebook is not the third place simply because there are too many appearances we're have to maintain.

prostoalex• 14 years ago

Just remove them. They'll still stay on as subscribers and see public posts.

CodeCube• 14 years ago

"Conversing with a friend, I start to share a story I’d earlier posted on Facebook. Since she didn’t comment or “like” the post I guessed she hadn’t yet seen it. Instead, she cuts me short: “Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook.”"

lol, my wife does this to me all the time :) (or should the emoticon be :( )

bbrizzi• 14 years ago

So just because you don't have the proper settings on your news feed, you're quitting facebook altogether.

I agree that facebook is a lot less personal than it used to be. Personally, I rarely update my facebook status or stare at the newsfeed. I use facebook to connect with "friends" whose phone number or e-mail address I don't have and to join or create events.Those two situations are perfectly well handled by facebook.

antidoh2• 14 years ago

Not just proper settings on his news feed. He also felt like he had to filter himself for propriety, and found little worth in the communication that resulted through that facade. That's not a technical issue, it's his valid personal issue. He's not the only one with that view of facebook.

shmerl• 14 years ago

Facebook is defective by design as a social network. It's for profit driven, privacy abusing and etc. and etc. It's a pity that it became a virtual monopoly. Same bad as happened with Windows on the desktop.

moron• 14 years ago

Facebook has a feature specifically for this, so that you see every update posted by people on your "VIP" list. I only know this because they put the feature in my face, I didn't go looking for it. Come on.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

I'm considering leaving facebook for the first time, because of the Sponsored Stories thing, which is showing up with disturbing regularity, and frequently winds up as ads for things that make me angry.

Nowadays, if you "Like" something, then that something can pay for the privilege to insert whatever stories it likes into your friends' facebook feeds, under the heading "so-and-so likes such-and-such" followed by your own message. Interestingly the person whose name is being used for the advertisement has no idea what ads are going out under their name.

Two of these in particular show up in my facebook feed several times a week and raise my blood pressure every time they do. One is a particularly annoying evangelical preacher slash motivational speaker who fills up my newsfeed with god-stuff due to the fact that a vague acquaintance I've met a couple of times happens to "like" him. Another is a political thing which fills up my newsfeed with posts I find highly disagreeable under the name of another friend of mine.

What were they thinking? Facebook has designed a feature which makes me hate my friends.

ovi256• 14 years ago

Facebook already includes tools to solve your issues. Either unfriend the vague acquintances, hide all their posts from your feed, or hide the annoying posts following some criteria.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

Actually I've discovered that the ads keep appearing even if you do hide all their posts from your feed.

Mikushi• 14 years ago

It doesn't work, there is a family member I have set to "Never show up on my news feed", and keeps coming back every time.

michelleclsun• 14 years ago

Agree. Facebook is a tool whose scope of use can be adjusted by each user's needs and expectations. It is true that the setting changes are not the most user-friendly / intuitive. It's also fair that some people want to cut off certain dependency of any tool, but it's not the tool to blame but a personal choice to make.

nitid_name• 14 years ago

Why are you facebook friends with people who post things you don't like?

I don't facebook often... don't they still have the ability to turn down how frequently you see posts from people? Can't you put them in facebook's equivalent of "circles" and keep their crap out of your feed?

planetguy9• 14 years ago

They don't post things I don't like -- they merely like things I don't like and the things they like post things on their behalf and without their knowledge.

Even if you put a person on "ignore" the ads will still show up.

warmwaffles• 14 years ago

When you are about to grant access to an application, be sure to read the policies and pay attention to your feed. Remove any unwanted crap.

It's like maintaining your inbox unfortunately.

dorianj• 14 years ago

I've been wondering about this, if I'm the only one going crazy or what. I don't think the ones that appear in your news feed are called "sponsored stories", but I could be wrong.

It's almost enough that I want to email my family and tell them to unlike all the crap they liked... Even trying to get FB not to display "likes" from that person fails to hide them.

jerf2• 14 years ago

"Nowadays, if you "Like" something, then that something can pay for the privilege to insert whatever stories it likes into your friends' facebook feeds, under the heading "so-and-so likes such-and-such" followed by your own message."

I find myself wanting to set up a Facebook account just to start screwing with that. Is it something that can be screwed with? ("jerf liked Crest brand toothpaste! He said: 'When you get home from a long day of work and just really need the unctuous feel of something smeared on your feet, there's nothing like Crest Toothpaste. Mmmm.... yeah.... oh my.... pics soon.'") Getting someone else to pay for that would almost be worth it.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

That's not how it works. Instead, Crelm toothpaste will note that you've liked them and forevermore your friends will get stories posted directly by Crelm toothpaste with the heading

Jerf likes Crelm Toothpaste [blah blah blah a big picture depicting how wonderful Crelm toothpaste is]

idleloops2• 14 years ago

> What were they thinking? Facebook has designed a feature which makes me hate my friends.

That's funny. It's a little like chalk and cheese. I had a friend on Facebook who posted political links religiously, he swamped my news feed and it was pretty depressing. In the end - I somehow muted him. He's more recently moved over to a blog (I think he was annoying others too.) Can't say that I've bothered to tune in though. I miss it in a way.

My stream is even more flooded on G+. I'd rather a page full of teasers with click down stories. G+ is just overwhelming even if you do create circles.

lupatus• 14 years ago

Farmville made me hate my friends on Facebook.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

Farmville could be blocked relatively easily. These can't be blocked at all.

superasn• 14 years ago

Yes, I too had the similar problem. I was missing out on updates from my brother while being bombarded with stupid gifs. But as pointed out in another comment it's just one day I had to sit for an hour and put everyone who I don't speak on phone regularly as acquaintances. Problem solved!

It was a bit hard for me to do this though, nearly took an hour.. so here are two suggestions

1) Brute force: option to mark everyone as acquaintances in one go and then de-select the people back to friends.

2) More automated: Facebook should make a module where if a person allows the app access to the phonebook, it somehow recommends a list of people who are important to me based on my frequency of calling/speaking them offline. I know privacy conscious people would absolutely scream in horror so this is why it should be opt-in only.

P.S. 3) Oh and timeline still sucks. It is just too hard to read, there ought to be a way to going back to the simple news feed.

drcube• 14 years ago

Facebook Purity

http://www.fbpurity.com/remove-facebook-timeline.htm

idleloops2• 14 years ago

I have privacy concerns about Facebook, and resent the fact that it's such a silo, but in the main in succeeds where other technologies have failed.

It's useful for finding people - a directory. If I want to get in touch with someone - and I don't have their contact details I can probably find them on Facebook and fire them a message.

If email was just as easy, people would have probably taken to that. Which is a shame, because Email could have been that easy. Privacy used to be more of a concern, and spam drove people away from publishing their addresses in directories.

I've left (privacy and personal reasons.) I since have missed the community. It's encouraged me to pick up the phone more, which is a nice thing. You just can't have the same rich interaction with people when typing compared to talking. But you can have a greater audience. Perhaps you communicate to more people with less content over something like Facebook, compared to having richer relationships with fewer people. It might all balance out.

Ultimately time is a premium. I certainly don't think G+ is the answer - it's much of the same.

padobson• 14 years ago

Curation of social media is becoming a big problem that only occured within the last few years. Trying to solve it algorithmically with plus ones and likes and upvotes seems to work when the content is centered around a specific topic, but not something so general as your Facebook friends list or Twitter feed.

And you can't just deny people you know from being your friend on Facebook. It's rude. If you're ok with being rude, this doesn't apply to you, but the quality of my Facebook stream is not worth sacrificing my manners - not when I can get better content elsewhere without having to do so.

I haven't left Facebook, I just ignore it, because there's nothing interesting there. I don't want to clean it up when my accounts on Twitter, Quora, Hacker News, and Stack Exchange provide much more interesting content.

cs7023• 14 years ago

As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the 'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..."

The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in the back of my mind say: no social algorithm can ever optimize its results to take into account how people will modify their behavior in response to the algorithm itself.

calinet62• 14 years ago

Her point still stands. I've been Facebooking since the start, so I don't necessarily alter my behavior much, I just use it to keep up with friends, post interesting tidbits about my life, and try to have real conversations happen.

I still see the same problems. When I talk to people, it's always "oh yeah, I saw on Facebook that you got a new job," etc. etc.

I went back and looked through my old e-mails from right before Facebook was becoming popular, early 2004. I once sent out one of those "My e-mail address is changing. Oh btw how are you?" e-mails to my whole list, and got back around 50 genuine responses that turned into conversations. Not "broadcast" style conversations, not public conversations, but real honest person-to-person human communication. It was brilliant.

I realized that I had completely lost that. If I was doing it today, I could send the same e-mail but people would send nothing back; it would just be "Thanks" because they already know everything else there is to know about my life, and I theirs.

It's a very strange and new way of connecting to people. On the one hand I have some deep insights into the lives of friends I might not otherwise talk to, or even those I do; on the other hand, I miss the humanity of one-on-one conversation.

I'm yet undecided if this is a good thing. But overall, I think the article overblows the affect this has on relationships. Personally, I sort of like it. All the trivial stuff is known already. No one cares where you work or what you're doing anymore, they want to hear how you're doing and how your life is really going. It negates some shallowness and small talk. Not necessarily bad.

But it is enormously complex. We still don't know how society will change as people become more connected in so many ways, but we do know it will change. Some might say it's the next level in our evolution; collaborative social evolution is the next step since biological evolution can't keep up. It'll be a fun ride.

cs7023• 14 years ago

calinet6: the fact that you're no longer sending 'broadcast' emails, nor consciously updating people about the changes in your life, and that "no one cares where you work or what you're doing anymore" are just more examples of gradual but dramatic changes in behavior resulting from the use of Facebook.

Unless Facebook has made some truly ground-breaking advances in AI, the company's algorithms cannot anticipate how users might modify their behavior in response to the algorithms themselves. AFAIK, that's not possible today.

Over time, this utter lack of 'intelligent auto-incorporation of feedback' might show up as people sharing 'fake' instead of real feelings, or as 'social' graphs diverging significantly from the true state of real-world relationships, or as automatic sharing of 'relevant' information (like ads) that look great to the algorithm but in hindsight are misguided.

(BTW, in my view, this is one of the biggest long-term risks for Facebook's business: that society over time learns to 'route around it' and it gradually loses relevance for day-to-day use.)

FWIW, I do agree with you that no one knows with certainty how society will change as a result of Facebook and its ilk.

andreasvc4• 14 years ago

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i.e., abuse) their results into a metaphor with seemingly broader implications, this is actually a mistake; their proofs simply don't hold under those more general circumstances.

cs7023• 14 years ago

andreasvc: AFAIK, there is no program in existence today that can successfully model "human agency" (as you put it). Wouldn't that require major breakthroughs in AI?

And my understanding from chatting with friends in the fraud-detection space is that, while current state-of-the-art machine-learning systems can successfully adapt to the data they obtain from users, they cannot adapt to users learning to game or 'route around' the system -- at least not without programmer intervention 'from above.'

The link to Gödel and Turing I saw is that solving this problem without intervention 'from above' would require a computer program that can successfully model itself as it interacts with humans, but then we run into those two guys, no?

rhizome• 14 years ago

The trajectories of adaptation then become second-and-beyond-order problems that in turn fall out of sync with reality.

ZanderEarth32• 14 years ago

I think people put too much emphasis on Facebook and what perceived problems it is 'suppose to solve' in their lives. You get out of it what you put it into it, just like anything else (mostly). If you don't feel connected with your friends, it's not FB's fault. FB to me isn't designed to make my connections with friends stronger, it's designed to keep lingering friendships going.

On a side note, why is it so important to declare that you are no longer using or on Facebook. This isn't limited to the OP either. I've met people in real life, who take great pride in not using FB anymore. I find it in the tech & podcast world too. It's a strange type of snobbery, between 'those in the know who aren't on facebook' versus the 'sheep who are on facebook'.

Well, I am no longer using brand name nasal spray. It wasn't fulfilling my life I like I thought it was supposed to. I used it like the bottle says too and while it does what it says it's supposed to, it's not what I want.

Argorak• 14 years ago

Oh, thats easy. Because there is a huge group of people that will view you as "off the norm" if you don't use Facebook. Which is snobbery as well. Every time i ride the bus, I hear the word "Facebook" at least once. So, the thing itself is a hot topic, so why not talk about it, even if you are not using it?

Your nasal spray, however, is not a hot topic.

jakejake• 14 years ago

This is exactly what I was going to post, but you said it better. The "I'm quitting Facebook" declarations strike me as a sad cry for attention.

Just stop checking your Facebook page and start hanging out more with friends in person. No need to be so dramatic about it.

kristiandupont• 14 years ago

Not being on Facebook seems to be the new "I don't even own a tv" http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention...

telepoiss• 14 years ago

Now that Facebook is going downhill (for me at least) I'm again actually contemplating the idea of getting a TV.

duncan2• 14 years ago

You'll eventually get over being "too cool" for Facebook. It's ok, I did it too. We'll welcome you back when you change your mind. Life is too short to worry so much about these things.

briandear5• 14 years ago

Life's too short to be watching cat videos and sifting through sponsored stories.

duncan2• 14 years ago

All your friends do on FB is post cat videos? ..and this is Facebook's fault? Ha. Maybe it's time to make some new friends?!

nollidge2• 14 years ago

This is fucking on-point. The Timeline is just completely useless anymore as a way of keep tabs on people I care about. I rarely care if my friend was tagged in a picture, and I never care that they commented on a wall post by some random person I've never met.

I wish I could ditch it altogether, but the events and messaging are an integral part of my social life now.

godisdad• 14 years ago

I don't know why everyone takes Facebook so seriously.

Well, actually I do but I don't want to dive into a long comment about how it's a voyeuristic, social panopticon and how easy it is to project your insecurities onto it. Well, I have a small and strange solution to staying in contact with your friends, do what I do: remove all your actual friends from your newsfeed.

When you see them, you won't already have eagerly instantiated things to talk about, you won't jaw off about some article they posted about the latest bath salt murder -- you'll actually catch up and connect in genuine conversation.

The site only has as much power as you give it, posting a long diatribe about how it has no power over you anymore because you deactivated is legitimizing its power over you.

lukejduncan• 14 years ago

The anecodte the poster gives is spot on and huge. There have been many times I've thought "I wonder why I don't hear from this person anymore" and it was simply a matter of Facebook no longer prioritizing their posts in my news feed.

Just because someones post isn't "liked" or clicked on in some way doesn't mean it's not valuable. It's a passive form of communication.

I don't know if this is just my perception, and maybe Facebook doesn't prioritize things in the news feed. Regardless, it's a UX question that needs to be asked by their team.

untog• 14 years ago

But Facebook offers comprehensive controls that let you decide who appears on your news feed and who does not. You just need to use them.

briandear5• 14 years ago

Can you block sponsored stories? Besides, what good are controls if they keep 'evolving' and force you to actually maintain those settings. Settings and prefs should be fire and forget. I should not have to revisit settings in response to some new feature. For example, that jackass new @facebook email thing. Facebook is circa 1999 Windows.

planetguy9• 14 years ago

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Most facebook controls are buried three levels of counterintuitive links down in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".

Or to put it another way, if I can't figure out how to make facebook show me stuff that isn't shite, how are ordinary people going to figure it out?

edit: Also I've figured out that the reason I no longer hear from an awful lot of my facebook friends is that I've probably set at least half of 'em to "ignore" due to 'em posting too much garbage.

personlurking3• 14 years ago

I've gone "old school" (trying to connect to people in 'old fashion' ways) on many somewhat prolonged occasions and it doesn't work. It's a reflection of society not my particular grouping of friends.

I spent a year writing many handwritten letters. People loved receiving them but seldom, if ever, returned the favor. I try and try again to meet with my friends to catch up (ie, going for coffee). Almost never happens, and when it does it's a chore to actually set up. Instead, it has to be an 'event' and it should be 'social'. I text my friends and they respond rather quickly...because I know if I call, many times they don't answer.

Of course, all this means is that the LCD is either me or society.

chipsy• 14 years ago

I think it's a rational trend. Our direction has been towards more "omniscient/passive" forms of information, where you can update at your own pace, and others consume that information optionally. Doing this is cost-effective and allows people to prioritize their contacts by reading their feed occasionally, rather than by doing "pavement pounding" to make calls and arrange dates.

In doing this we miss out on some deeper conversations, but I think we gain on balance because it allows people to _choose_ which conversations they want to pursue. That's the key thing here - if you aren't feeling a benefit from socializing, you aren't motivated to do it. Which inevitably leads to the conclusion that most people are finding each other boring, even if they're friends...

personlurking3• 14 years ago

"most people are finding each other boring, even if they're friends..."

this kind of frightens me, even though I lean towards introversion.

mixmastamyk• 14 years ago

Has some good points, but I think many get the wrong idea about facebook. It's a way to keep in touch with far off friends who you wouldn't hear from at all otherwise. It's never affected a real relationship for me in the slightest, other than, "I saw your pics." The news feed could be better, but it has become more relevant since I've silenced a few overposters and blocked apps, etc.

tgrass• 14 years ago

Many of the complaints could be resolved with more transparency on Facebook's part. The frustrations seem to be generally focused on managing communication: incoming and outgoing, an issue of curation.

The problem is, despite Facebook having many tools to calibrate one's communications, Facebook is still a blackbox. We click the appropriate Account Settings radio button and like the good scientists we are, wait to see what happens. The fact of the matter is, we are pulling a lever and hoping it is attached to some mechanism on the other side.

The same is true of Google and SEO.

Odd that obfuscation is the hallmark of our internet experiences.

bhashkarsharma• 14 years ago

I did the same thing 2 weeks back. People whom I meet keep asking, but honestly, I haven't missed it for one second. I wrote a little something about it http://tumblr.bhashkar.me/post/23712148539/why-i-deactivated...

k2xl• 14 years ago

"One evening, over pizza and wine she’s telling me about a breakup and a poem she posted. I never saw the poem. When I visited her Timeline I realized she had been posting every day and it never once showed up in my Newsfeed. Instead I see a photo of someone I don’t know; gliding down my Newsfeed simply because one of my friends “liked” it and the original poster doesn’t have their privacy settings in place."

Aye, totally agree. The day Facebook launched EdgeRank was the day Facebook started it's decline. In fact, there's a pattern that happens to companies that try and "assume" what their users want to see.

danso• 14 years ago

> Conversing with a friend, I start to share a story I’d earlier posted on Facebook. Since she didn’t comment or “like” the post I guessed she hadn’t yet seen it. Instead, she cuts me short: “Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook.” And that was it. No dialog, no joy at conversing with each other, just friends passively watching each other from a distance. I’m guilty, I’ve done it too. We’ve become quiet ships, passing by in the dark silence of the night.

Hmm, that's just a tough anecdote to use to make his point...it could be that that his friend is not much of a conversationalist with him.

But I admit to using FB to promote things that I don't feel like wasting real-time talking about...like projects or articles I liked...And everyone who's ever been on the receiving end of a mass-email is happy about that.

silentscope• 14 years ago

how about de-friending some people? I do it and it works pretty well.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

Hold on. First off, you should have deleted your account years ago.

"Connecting with friends" is a terrible point to make: e-mail has been around for decades. However, such a point does intersect with my main goal for making this post. People are lazy. Now programmers are saying it, and now everyone else will realize just how true it is, and being lazy has consequences.

So, we've had e-mail for decades. Why won't people use it? Instead of wasted texting plans, etc.? You could always keep up with your friends and family through e-mail. But the interfaces were either ugly, inconvenient, or disorganized. It's beyond me that an {interface} should have to tell me to contact my mother or that an {interface} should compel me to "keep up with old friends."

This. Is. Absurd.

[Luddite Rant:] Sorry, but pick up the damn phone and call them. (Or click "compose" and just {try} to type out something meaningful.)

I believe this finely leads into my next point: Not many of you have anything Gricean (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html) to say. What [would] you say in an e-mail to a friend? --

People don't have much to say anyway (and for my personal stake in it, it's because they're not reading anything interesting), and Facebook isn't going to change that. That, I think, is the point behind http://weknowwhatyouredoing.com/. There's nothing-to-hide, and conversely, there's nothing-to-show either. FB is an enabler of oversharing, and it's allowing people to empty out too much without taking in substantive content.

I'm going to say it engenders bad cognitive hygiene.

ahelwer2• 14 years ago

How is it this same tired argument pops up every time quitting Facebook is discussed? The sweet spot for Facebook is acquaintances. People you would not usually email or call, and only hear about once in a while through the grapevine. It maintains familiarity. Subbed in a co-ed game of ultimate frisbee and met some people? Add them on Facebook.

nerdfiles2• 14 years ago

I think it's a "tired argument" because its not easily defeated. _Why_ wouldn't you "usually" e-mail or call? Why? Why would you? (This seems like Churchill's point: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.") E-mail didn't fail, this is why we're seeing a resurgence of it (http://three.sentenc.es/, 501 developers against e-mail bombardment, minimalism over e-mail organization, etc.). Why has FB suddenly become "the best we've got" when all people seem to argue for is particular features that could be replaced. FB is a mash-up; this has nothing to do with "maintainability of social grace." It's a mash-up; and consumers like mash-ups.

Seriously: _Why?_ Why do we need we need a "social framework" that captures the rest of our human-interaction? We do we need a "social baseline"? Why do we need a system to maintain familiarity for us? I'm not even sure I understand the value of the point you've made, even if it is a good argument. _I_ maintain familiarity; Facebook is a tool for supporting what I do naturally.

> It maintains familiarity.

I'm not sure what this means. How does it do this? By making an API function do... What?

> Subbed in a co-ed game of ultimate frisbee and met some people? Add them on Facebook.

Add their e-mails? Organize your labels.

The sweet spot for _who_? I'm telling others to drop it because you can achieve those goals through other interfaces; you're telling me that others shouldn't set their goals too high (acquaintances). My point still stands. E-mail [certainly] would make more sense within the "acquaintances" counterpoint.

Facebook is a set of opinions as to how one should manage (or maintain?) one's social life. Isn't it clear that if one rejects that System, one might be expected to provide an alternative, or possibly simpler, solution? The argument cannot really be a surprise to you, surely.

[EDIT:] I'm _struggling_ to understand the point about "maintaining" familiarity. I really do wish to understand it, as I feel it touches the heart of the matter. However, such an idea may require a break-down.

I think the issue of "discovery" is an important one, but what actually am I discovering in this digital world? A portfolio? Or a person? To argue that FB's sweet spot is about acquaintances from the evidence that it's a good tallying tool, or a notes tool, for friends made in the physical social world, I think, is a bad argument, or at least it's not very compelling. I think such an argument only re-confirms the "tired argument" I initially presented.

e12e• 14 years ago

I disagree. A lot of the sharing I do on facebook are "neat" things -- things that would drive most of my friends crazy if I put them in an email -- but stuff that those who want to see "what I'm up to" can check out from time to time. If anyone emailed me all the top stuff on y-combinator I'd be upset -- I have no problem skimming the list and looking at what I find interesting.

I could use a blog + microblog for a similar way of sharing -- but most people aren't so interested in what I'm doing that they'll go and read some random links I've posted -- but when they have the time and are in the mood to have a look -- facebook works. Additionally I can post semi-private things on facebook -- because it has an authorization infrastructure in place -- I know most of my friends wouldn't be interested in or able to remember a set of credentials just to have a look at my microblog.

Personally I'd like to use a "homepage" (remember those?) for the same things -- and I probably will move to that eventually -- but a lot of people I'd like to keep in touch with simply don't have a reasonable way to "watch" 100s of activity streams from different blogs, microblogs, rss feeds etc. I realize many people use twitter for a similar reason.

My main problem with both of those are the same: the have broken a perfectly good distributed architecture by centralizing it -- and then worked really hard to make it scale again. Still working on a design for something less centralized, but still workable for those that aren't interested in technology.

The Diaspora "pod" concept seems likely to be the way to go -- in essence it's what all "micro communties" such as phpbb boards for teams/groups/clans etc are doing today. I'm not sure if it is feasible to make something "general" that also works -- but it'll be interesting to try. For authentication and authorization openid/google login and optional "local" registration combined with "friend lists"/"circles" should do the trick.

There still remains the problem of discovery -- "friend me on facebook" is usually quite simple if you remember the first name, and know someone in common -- "go to my blog, log in and say hi!" -- doesn't quite work. I do agree "send me an email" works better than both those -- it's a shame a lot of people simply aren't using email much these days.

zainny• 14 years ago

The problem seems to ultimately always boil down to "I added far too many people to Facebook as friends, and now Facebook is useless!"

To which the solution is easy: cut down the number of people you are friends with on Facebook.

For me, I have < 30 people I've friended on Facebook. But they're real friends and family, people I know and want to keep in touch with. And that's made all the difference to how I use Facebook.

bryanjclark• 14 years ago

I've been on the fence about quitting Facebook for a while.

On one hand, it feels like junk-food-friendship: it feels like you're connecting and communicating, but in reality the time you spend scrolling lists on your phone could be spent with something far better: closing the FB app and calling a buddy.

On the other hand, so many people use FB that it's tough to completely pull away from it. It's where my generational cohort shares photos, so I can't fully walk away unless I want to miss out on the photos from last week's camping trip, etc.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

Without an analysis of causes, I can agree that my own FB "news feed" has been becoming consistently crappier. Especially since roughly the beginning of this year.

peterwwillis3• 14 years ago

For all of you wondering "Can I really give up Facebook?" the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid." You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes.

The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event. They knew I had abandoned Facebook and wanted to make sure I was included. I felt slightly honored that they would go "out of their way" to include me, and it was much more meaningful than the average Facebook invite-all event listing.

Have you ever met someone you hadn't seen in a while, and they ask you what you've been doing, and you get a plethora of different reactions as you explain the ups and downs of your recent adventures? You don't get that if they're on Facebook. Human interaction is based on communication, and Facebook is not communication. It's the Reader's Digest version of The Truman Show.

Maybe I am a luddite. But what i'm fighting against is the replacement of emotion and social interaction with technology. Maybe someday soon, Google Glass will become so ubiquitous that we'll all watch snippets of other people's lives instead of status updates, and we'll never have to live life on our own again; we'll just live through someone else.

Karunamon6• 14 years ago

>the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid."

Ignoring your patronizing, insulting tone for a bit, somehow I doubt it's that easy for most. If you're addicted to something (and I mean really, truly addicted), and it has negative consequences on your life, the answer is always "Well just stop it doing it, then". However, people do not work that way, and it's at the very least naive to assume it's that simple.

>You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes.

Applies to Twitter, email, SMS, basically any communication method ever. The fact that becoming addicted to a communication medium can have a negative impact on your life is not a valid argument against said communication medium, because it applies to all of them.

>Facebook is not communication.

What would you call it then!? It's a platform where you share and talk with friends. How is that not communication?

>replacement of emotion and social interaction with technology.

If you've never been emotionally impacted by a social interaction which did not occur with the person standing right next to you (i.e. via technology), I daresay you are either leading us on, or are not much of a communicator to begin with.

peterwwillis3• 14 years ago

Any bit of information can make an emotional impact, if it's meaningful to you. Maybe you learned that your whole family burned alive via morse code. Doesn't really matter how you got the information, you got it. And you'll probably have an emotional response. That isn't what i'm talking about at all.

I said replacement of emotion and social interaction with technology. It's the removal of the human element that troubles me. When people stop reaching out to one another, and instead reach out to a plastic widget. When instead of sharing, laughing, and crying together, we take, laugh, and cry in a room, alone, our thumbs and index fingers hurriedly punching out comments on data streams, missing vital clues and skipping over the common human courtesies we learn and use in the course of physical interaction. Facebook is stripping away our humanity.

The simplest example is the occasional comment-box-flame-war you'll see when someone posts something about race, religion, sex, politics, etc. Total strangers haranguing your friends because they decided your status update's comment box was a nice place to have a pointless argument. It's made worse by the vagueries of the internet and the invincibility of the internet.

Email and text don't work the same way, and aren't a threat to human interaction in the way Facebook is. Twitter is similar, though, which is why I also deleted Twitter.

vijayr• 14 years ago

What would you call it then!? It's a platform where you share and talk with friends. How is that not communication?

When one sends a email newsletter to 50K people, that is also communication. When one blogs, that is also communication. But these are not replacements for actual "conversations" which you have with one person at a time, or very small groups (2-3 people?) - which is very engaged, where everyone is interested in everyone else and emotionally involved.

Facebook news feed is like a giant scrolling billboard of "announcements" - sure it is communication in the sense our friends are telling us what they were upto - that is pretty much it.

May be I am wrong, but I think GP meant the difference between real conversations and broadcasting announcements.

btilly• 14 years ago

> > Facebook is not communication. > > What would you call it then!? It's a platform where > you share and talk with friends. How is that not > communication?

Facebook has the same relationship to communication that Doritos has to food.

pnathan• 14 years ago

There's a place for thin-band broadcast-based human interaction. Me, I think that's Twitter.

Facebook tries to pretend its more. Its not.

If I want to hold private dialogues with people from across the country - long, intense, and thoughtful - I prefer email.

Wilya• 14 years ago

> The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event.

On the other hand, maybe you've missed a dozen of other events, where you could have had your share of "real" communication.

I despise Facebook as a company, and its many shady schemes, but I have to admit, it's a very efficient tool for connecting people.

niels_olson• 14 years ago

Isolated and alone, other people making money off you, and your friends don't talk to you any more? Sounds like prostitution to me.

kin• 14 years ago

These posts are pretty common I feel in HN. Every time it just comes down to FB gets harder to use. I have a Close Friends tab and I put my close friends in it. That's it.

I "Like" some pages but you can easily click on that drop down to unsubscribe.

FB is pretty flexible on what content you want to appear in your feed and sometimes there are surprises but you can pretty easily scold it with a few button clicks and it'll fix right back up. Works for me. I understand there's a need for it to just work without the use of any interaction but then you'd lose a lot of features if you had that.

Karunamon6• 14 years ago

I've really never seen a "facebook sucks" post that wasn't based on one of the following tired arguments:

   - Ludditism
     Usually of the form:
     Technology is *TEARING US APART* don't you see?! (Response: No, not really, perhaps you just suck at communicating?)

   - Ignorance of use
     Usually of the form:
     WTF I got fired for posting all those pictures of me using drugs?! (Response: Learn to use the privacy settings!)
     or: It's too noisy, all of these stupid game requests.. (Response: Block the offending apps and ask your friends to knock it off)
   
   - Bad connections
     Usually of the form:
     or: [annoying/offensive] $person keeps appearing in my news feed (Response: Block the offending person!)
     or: All of my friends post pointless, boring minuate of their lives! (I.e. the Twitter argument) (Response: Don't friend those people!)
     or: I don't want to turn down my Boss' friend request and look bad! I'm $sociallyUnfasionableThing! (Response: Use lists.)

It was refreshing to see one that actually lays out with an actual example what the problem is, in this case, algorithmic changes which ruined his experience. He veered toward #1 above at the very end, but still this was interesting to read.

Every single one of these things above, though, traces back to ignorance (usually) or cirucmstance. Could Facebook do a better job of making these things obvious? Absolutely. Facebook is not an intuitive site to use, and even when you have your head around it, they usually change something arbitrarily (the recent email thing comes to mind).

However, that said, you really shouldn't dump on the site wholesale just because it doesn't work for you. It works for millions of other people just fine.

Karunamon6• 14 years ago

Anyone care to rebut instead of downvote and run?

donniezazen• 14 years ago

I have taken about 2 weeks of Facebook fast. It was great. You are more peaceful. Their is no guilt about not being able to do all the things that you should to be doing. You save time. You have more intense face to face or phone conversation with your friends.

I am back on Facebook because it is easier to connect to future-to-be-friends. You connect on Facebook and may be become good friends.

I plan to slowly wind Facebook down and eventually leave it for good.

sarla999• 14 years ago

goodbye facebook. why?

mkramlich• 14 years ago

With Facebook you are not their customer, you are their product. If anything, if Zuck would like a way to monetize better without alienating users he should add some kind of Facebook Premium/Gold account upgrade. Where users can choose to throw a few bucks at them each month or year, whatever, in exchange for some cool extra features, and/or to be exempt from advertisements and privacy shenanigans. Money is money, so they shouldn't care exactly where it comes from. But if you give the opportunity for each user to decide for themselves whether they wish to be a product or a customer, I think it will lead to a better situation for everyone involved. Also better fits that market divide between the folks who want the cheapest experiences versus the best experiences.

geoka9• 14 years ago

Please, please, can you consider implementing a higher contrast color scheme for the text on your blog? It's really painful to read as it is now; I wanted to and tried but had to give up.

dkhenry• 14 years ago

So this is exactly the problem Google+ was designed to solve.

Don't want your entire friends list to see a post only share with with a specific circle.

Don't care to hear useless banter ? Don't include a person in your circle or turn down the volume on that circle. I had a good friend of mine from growing up who decided one day he was going to post nothing but memes. He went into the silent circle and I can check in on him every now and then if I so choose.

Goodbye Facebook.

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