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As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they los

by bargl 9y ago

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach. If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.

Arizhel 9y ago
>If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). WTF? How would they be "gone"? Facebook does not control your memories. So what else would you be losing if Facebook suddenly disappeared? Photos or videos? You don't say exactly, but I suspect this is the case. If so, then that's your own stupid fault for not keeping personal copies of that stuff. If you don't value that data enough to keep your own personal copies of it, then you don't deserve to have it IMO. Portable hard drives are not expensive these days, and store literally terabytes of data (I just bought a 4TB USB drive a couple months ago for just over $100). USB thumb drives are less than $10 for smaller sizes which will still probably hold everything that's on your phone now. There is absolutely no excuse for not having copies of data that's most precious to you.
- nayuki 9y ago
  Photos and videos might be easy to keep a local copy of, because you would be uploading from your phone or computer onto Facebook. But memories cover many other aspects as well. Such as the descriptions that you write on your Facebook photos. The conversation threads that ensue. The face tags that you add and other people add to your photos. The set of photos that you selected for upload (rather than the outtakes). The way you name, organize, and describe albums. Storage may be cheap these days, but ensuring that you have copies of your data in multiple places - such as hand-typed text - can be very time-consuming.
- lucasmullens 9y ago
  Not all the memories I value on Facebook are my own posts. Most people don't have copies of the photos they've been tagged in unless they manually downloaded them.
vinhboy 9y ago
Same here. I use facebook because I enjoy the content that my friends share. I am not using it because I believe “I have nothing to hide”. I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get. But I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me. I get more value out of facebook than the countless other services that spy on me. For example, just a few weeks ago I got a fake hand written letter from a car dealership telling me exactly how many miles I have on my car and how I should trade it in. My ultimate conclusion about privacy is that you should take steps to protect with you want to remain private. Because even if facebook disappears tomorrow, something else will take its place, including things created by our own government. It's sad to think that, but it keeps me from naively thinking that what I share online is somehow private... because it's not, and never will be. That includes places like HN and Reddit. The government has programs to monitor all our profiles on these sites. I am aware of that, and I live my life accordingly.
- haggy 9y ago
  You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". That's the problem. The government has never had a tool like this before and because of the social graph that facebook created, will likely not have another one like it anytime soon. Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it. Using the service is admitting that you are willing to give up all secrecy and privacy (thanks to their chat being completely centralized). IMO, using Facebook implies you don't care about secrecy or privacy.
  - benchaney 9y ago
    > You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing. > Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it. This isn't true at all. While Facebook is somewhat sketchy about changing their privacy rules, if you don't want certain information made publicly available, you can just not put that information into Facebook (and yes, that includes Messenger). Any non-technical person can understand this.
brightball 9y ago
Download your Facebook history.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
I think that this is not an argument pro Facebook but against Facebook. It demonstrates that it is a bad idea to trust important information into the hands of a third party. If Facebook offers you a way to make a backup of your account then you should seriously consider to use it to have an alternative copy of your important memories.
throwanem 9y ago
I've never used Facebook. But if I had, to the extent you have, it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my emotional life were all but inextricably tied into one private company, such that staying in that company's good graces had become a necessary part of maintaining access to my own memories.
- bargl 9y ago
  I think you are taking this a little out of context. The best part for me is the feed into other peoples lives. It's a service I'd be sad to loose. It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person? If you don't then it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my personal data was tied up into one private company. See what I did there? Again, just to reiterate it's about the feed, and the loss of that connection to the people in my feed. I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good? It's not going to happen, just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
  - gervase 9y ago
    I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation. You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar. Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free). Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost. That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.
codingdave 9y ago
This comment seems to be an exact copy of the last 2 lines of this comment --> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395046 Why?
- quakeguy 9y ago
  Bots.
- mklim 9y ago
  bargl asked aantix permission to directly quote them without the intro further downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395143 >Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.
hrktb 9y ago
I'm curious of the other services you tried that preexisted facebook, and how they hindered you from connecting emotionaly ? I think facebook has unique features, in particular a true global scale, but for the emotional side, is there anhthing inherent to facebook that makes connection deeper ? To be honest, I still feel that the 'real identity' concept is a big hurdle to participate freely, and stops me from posting some of the more personal stuff that I was posting before under nickname based anonimity (even if my contact are all offline relations). A lot of people don't seem to get along with the idea of having multiple profiles targeted to different circles, and switching profiles is actually a PITA in facebook when using it mainly on mobile. I switched to instagram for a while, but it is yet another niche that doesn't really overlap with what other social services where filing.

by bargl 9y ago

Arizhel 9y ago

>If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). WTF? How would they be "gone"? Facebook does not control your memories. So what else would you be losing if Facebook suddenly disappeared? Photos or videos? You don't say exactly, but I suspect this is the case. If so, then that's your own stupid fault for not keeping personal copies of that stuff. If you don't value that data enough to keep your own personal copies of it, then you don't deserve to have it IMO. Portable hard drives are not expensive these days, and store literally terabytes of data (I just bought a 4TB USB drive a couple months ago for just over $100). USB thumb drives are less than $10 for smaller sizes which will still probably hold everything that's on your phone now. There is absolutely no excuse for not having copies of data that's most precious to you.

nayuki 9y ago
Photos and videos might be easy to keep a local copy of, because you would be uploading from your phone or computer onto Facebook. But memories cover many other aspects as well. Such as the descriptions that you write on your Facebook photos. The conversation threads that ensue. The face tags that you add and other people add to your photos. The set of photos that you selected for upload (rather than the outtakes). The way you name, organize, and describe albums. Storage may be cheap these days, but ensuring that you have copies of your data in multiple places - such as hand-typed text - can be very time-consuming.
lucasmullens 9y ago
Not all the memories I value on Facebook are my own posts. Most people don't have copies of the photos they've been tagged in unless they manually downloaded them.

vinhboy 9y ago

Same here. I use facebook because I enjoy the content that my friends share. I am not using it because I believe “I have nothing to hide”. I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get. But I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me. I get more value out of facebook than the countless other services that spy on me. For example, just a few weeks ago I got a fake hand written letter from a car dealership telling me exactly how many miles I have on my car and how I should trade it in. My ultimate conclusion about privacy is that you should take steps to protect with you want to remain private. Because even if facebook disappears tomorrow, something else will take its place, including things created by our own government. It's sad to think that, but it keeps me from naively thinking that what I share online is somehow private... because it's not, and never will be. That includes places like HN and Reddit. The government has programs to monitor all our profiles on these sites. I am aware of that, and I live my life accordingly.

haggy 9y ago
You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". That's the problem. The government has never had a tool like this before and because of the social graph that facebook created, will likely not have another one like it anytime soon. Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it. Using the service is admitting that you are willing to give up all secrecy and privacy (thanks to their chat being completely centralized). IMO, using Facebook implies you don't care about secrecy or privacy.
- benchaney 9y ago
  > You say "I am sensitive to privacy and secrecy. I will fight for it every chance I get" but then contradict with "I willingly share my life on facebook and enjoy the content shared with me". This is not a contradiction. Someone with privacy has the right to decide what they do and don't want to share publicly. Like you, I am concerned by how Facebook is used, and some of its societal implications, but this sort of extremist attitude helps nothing. > Unfortunately for the average user (and even very advanced users) leaving Facebook altogether is the only option to maintaining secrecy of any kind. FB updates ToS far too often and nobody bothers to stay up to date with it. This isn't true at all. While Facebook is somewhat sketchy about changing their privacy rules, if you don't want certain information made publicly available, you can just not put that information into Facebook (and yes, that includes Messenger). Any non-technical person can understand this.

brightball 9y ago

Download your Facebook history.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

I think that this is not an argument pro Facebook but against Facebook. It demonstrates that it is a bad idea to trust important information into the hands of a third party. If Facebook offers you a way to make a backup of your account then you should seriously consider to use it to have an alternative copy of your important memories.

throwanem 9y ago

I've never used Facebook. But if I had, to the extent you have, it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my emotional life were all but inextricably tied into one private company, such that staying in that company's good graces had become a necessary part of maintaining access to my own memories.

bargl 9y ago
I think you are taking this a little out of context. The best part for me is the feed into other peoples lives. It's a service I'd be sad to loose. It's interesting to find someone on here who maintains all of their files/email/photos/etc locally in a redundantly backed-up manner at home on their own personal server. How did you do that? Can you recommend me a way to do that for a non-technical person? If you don't then it would horrify and frighten me to reflect upon the fact that so much of my personal data was tied up into one private company. See what I did there? Again, just to reiterate it's about the feed, and the loss of that connection to the people in my feed. I mean what would you do if apple/google wrote an update to their os that wiped all of your contacts for good? It's not going to happen, just like your example of loosing access to my memories because Facebook decides to destroy it's own brand.
- gervase 9y ago
  I know it may have been rhetorical, but I just don't think managing your own data is possible (yet) for the truly non-technical person, at least at a level that competes with FB in both price and simplicity; it's still a choose-2 situation. You can get a pretty good system set up with rsync, ZFS, RAID, etc. distributed between multiple machines and multiple sites, and have good security at a low price at the cost of a high knowledge bar. Alternatively, you can have a pretty simple cloud backup system through Backblaze, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc., which should provide good security to people with relatively basic technical knowledge, but at a non-negligible cost (compared to free). Finally, you've got the current cloud "ecosystem" players like Apple, Google, FB, etc., who can offer good technical security (ignoring the "we have locked your account" arguments) to absolutely all skill levels, with zero perceived cost. That being said, I think the kinds of people who (A) actually even think about the privacy of online services, and (B) care enough to do something about it, probably have sufficient technical skill to choose other options. They can decide how important that privacy is to them, in terms of investing time, money, or both to solve these problems.

codingdave 9y ago

This comment seems to be an exact copy of the last 2 lines of this comment --> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395046 Why?

quakeguy 9y ago
Bots.
mklim 9y ago
bargl asked aantix permission to directly quote them without the intro further downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395143 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14395143 >Do you mind if I word for word quote your above to see if I get downvoted too? I want to repost with just the last two paragraphs to see what happens. I'm curious how this post would have been received without the intro.

hrktb 9y ago

I'm curious of the other services you tried that preexisted facebook, and how they hindered you from connecting emotionaly ? I think facebook has unique features, in particular a true global scale, but for the emotional side, is there anhthing inherent to facebook that makes connection deeper ? To be honest, I still feel that the 'real identity' concept is a big hurdle to participate freely, and stops me from posting some of the more personal stuff that I was posting before under nickname based anonimity (even if my contact are all offline relations). A lot of people don't seem to get along with the idea of having multiple profiles targeted to different circles, and switching profiles is actually a PITA in facebook when using it mainly on mobile. I switched to instagram for a while, but it is yet another niche that doesn't really overlap with what other social services where filing.