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There's many people out there, myself included, who signed up with Facebook years ago and don't use it today. I don't like FB personally but don't understand t

There's many people out there, myself included, who signed up with Facebook years ago and don't use it today. I don't like FB personally but don't understand the steady stream of criticism about -- that it's too addictive, that the site should be curating content in the wake of the last election? Pretty sad if you ask me. FB is not responsible for verifying the truth of every FB news post, nor helping its users to live productive meaningful lives. If you are addicted to FB you should do some soul searching.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
a3n 9y ago
Social media will have their "cigarette moment," after enough time has passed to do the studies.
- snomad 9y ago
  These statements + the 60 minutes piece awhile back (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/ https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/) make this a very likely outcome. I wonder what the equivalent warning label + restrictions will look like.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Removing much of the motivation for this crap by outlawing exploitation of user data, and making even having it very expensive and/or risky, through huge bond or insurance requirements to cover data breaches for anyone who stores such things, would be a good place to start. And yes, that should absolutely apply to more traditional data-mining companies (credit card companies, for example).
Super_Jambo 9y ago
Because facebook is a handy label for all forms of malicious capitalism. And the excesses of malicious capitalism are becoming sufficiently extreme that people are starting to notice. It's much easier to notice this in new technologies rather than old ones you're already comfortable with. So facebook gets the flak, which is deserved but lots of other people avoid it. Take soft drinks which are terrible for peoples health. Your profit comes from: 1) Convincing people that buying your drink will make them popular & happy. 2) Convincing the government to keep corn subsidies. 3) Convincing everyone that calories in calories out and self control are the _real_ method to health. Our sugar water isn't at fault it's your personal weakness! We're in a situation where powerful companies use their economic clout to buy off the government and convince the population of falsehoods so they can make more profit. This isn't new but since we've gotten pretty optimised on at solving genuine human needs (companies vs entropy) is much harder to profit from than fooling suckers into bad choices (companies vs irrational monkey brains). So now all our most profitable companies largely work to create little anti-competitive fiefdoms and to fool people into harming themselves. So of course people are going to point out that this is terrible and we should probably do something to regulate it's excess.
- ams6110 9y ago
  A soft drink maker's profit comes from making something its customers like and want to pay for. Busybodies notwithstanding.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    You forgot the part of shaping public opinion that their products are not a health issue and having the public subsidize their main ingredient. Even if you don't drink soft drinks you still subsidize health effects and corn and sugar.
  - specialist 9y ago
    If soft drink mfgs had to actually pay for the water, sugar, pollution, and diabetes treatments, they wouldn't be profitable. Externalize costs, privatize profits.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    A methamphetamine dealers profit comes from making something their customers like and want to pay for... etc.
  - groby_b 9y ago
    The same applies to drug dealers. Busybodies notwithstanding. But underneath that simplistic surface view, you're dealing with somebody who inflicts cost on society as a whole to extract profit for themselves. And they extract it in a way that individuals don't necessarily care to fix. And so, you'll need somebody to stand up for a functioning society. That would then be your "busybodies". (Sure, there's the libertarian fantasy of complete self-determination. Which inevitably leads to a might-makes-right world. Most of us have decided long ago we'd rather live in a civilized society)
- rayvd 9y ago
  I worry far more about malicious collectivism.
diogenescynic 9y ago
Read the book “Irresistable: The Rise of Addictive Technology” and I suspect you’ll have a different opinion. People get addicted to everything that exists and you’re essentially blaming the victim. The difference is also that Facebook designs its Newsfeed/Instagram like a slot-machine that encourages people to just keep hitting refresh. Maybe they’ll see something new or they’ll get a like... Also, most people aren’t nearly as smart as the people on this thread. So you have fairly average folks getting hooked on tech that was designed to be that way by psychology majors and data scientists. Also, Facebook could do a lot better in removing propaganda and obvious lies. They just don’t want to remove all the hundreds of millions of fake accounts they report as real to their ad buyers.
- lavamantis 9y ago
  With all the resources at their disposal, they could perhaps bring in a professional editorial staff to rank each news source based on some unbiased (ahem) and transparent criteria like # of sources for a story, past accuracy, level of bias, etc. Still let people click and post whatever but apply an easily visible and understandable "news" score.
dalbasal 9y ago
I was with you until recently. Don't like it, don't use it. I log in once a month. Never felt strongly about FB one way or another. But lately, I flipped. I think responsibility needs to correlate to some extent with power, to be useful. FB have power now, big power. They are not some site, they're a core social and political institution of society. In some circles, FB's just a very common way to conduct part of your social life. In that context, complaining about FB is like complaining about your local town square. It's noisy and filthy and making our social time suck. I consider this an appropriate complaint, considering what FB is and does. "Go start your own social network" is a red herring. It's like saying "if you don't like this country, leave". At least, I consider these similar. On the news point, I consider this a seperate point and a bigger deal. This is what flipped me. FB is the world's most important news outlet. I think this is undeniable in 2017. They have tremendous power (and responsibility) in this role. News/journalism is an institution of democracy and political life generally. FB decide who sees what news, and this is a huge deal. If they peddle crap quality news, the overall quality of journalism in society deteriorates. The quality of news (taken as a whole, including the news bubbles and everything else) on FB is terrible. It's a valid complaint and we should be louder about it.
- Retric 9y ago
  FB is very much falling into a local not global optimum. Social networks are optimizing for the derivative of peoples actions. A/B testing to see what causes more clicks etc. However, people are complex enough that they notice patterns and change how they approach things. Some of the most frequent users suddenly chose to quit. I remember seeing a slightly different discussion on HN ~5 years ago with almost the same arguments and thinking it was Déjà Vu because it was so similar to another HN post. Which get's a very different response than the first time around, because people change. Yesterday FB may have been the worlds most important news source, today less so, and long term people will treat it as just another tabloid. In that context, starting your own 'social network' will eventually be good advice, because trust is much easier to lose than gain.
- zupreme 9y ago
  I love your comment but disagree on one point. I don't think Facebook has ANY obligation to improve the quality of the "news" shared on it. I favor freedom of speech and freedom of association. If I have a friend who keeps posting BS articles from shady sources (and I do) then I just block them from my feed or simply ignore their posts about current events and conspiracy theories. I think asking FB, or any other platform, to start policing the quality of what we post is dangerous. What happens is if a story breaks that official authorities deny, but which is actually true. Would you want FB being the arbiter of truth, in such a case, or would you prefer for individuals (preferably alot of them) to be free to do their own research and to come to their own conclusions?
kolbe 9y ago
I'd love (love!) for the answer to all questions about addiction to be "suffer your own consequences," but the US exists as a massive welfare state where intelligent and conscientious citizens should try to ensure that the investments they're making in the lower classes are going to better use than heroin and acting as proxy votes to foreign regimes in US elections. But we're not even close to a libertarian enough nation to just ignore the problems that corporations create for our citizens, even if those problems could be avoided by personal responsibility. And "soul searching" is waaaay too far up Maslow's hierarchy for most US citizens to even start considering.
- MsMowz 9y ago
  We don't have a welfare state. We probably have fewer social services than any other industrialized country.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    >fewer social services than any other industrialized country. Conversely your own argument can simply be stated as "We have a smaller welfare state than most other industrialized countries" So I don't think you successfully argued that we don't have a welfare state at all.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      The existence of welfare does not a welfare state make.
      - pixl97 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state By the technical definition, yea, it does seem to.
    - MsMowz 9y ago
      If any state that isn't just police and a military counts as a welfare state, then I don't think that's a useful definition of welfare state.
0xfeba 9y ago
Some businesses rely heavily on FB and other social media for getting customers. Other people only get family updates from it. It's getting harder and harder to "just don't use" social media.
- sasvari 9y ago
  It's getting harder and harder to "just don't use" social media. I don't know about the business perspective, but why is it hard not to use facebook for people? It's a serious question. Everybody I know (me included) who is not on facebook has no problem with it, and it certainly isn't getting harder.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    Because by getting off Facebook, you end up missing a lot of what you are used to. If your life and your friend's life is not on it, this won't affect you. But if you and your social network has let Facebook grow as a dependency, you can't easily get out of it. The only way it could work is if you manage to migrate your entire social circle off it and it won't happen. By getting off Facebook, you simply make yourself hard to reach and it will make your casual relationships rot and die. When my friends create an event, they click "add all members of 'amazing friend group' to event" and that's it. Nobody is going to then track down the one person who decided to leave the group for a casual event like "5-7 beer this Friday". Even for big events, you may end up being let out simply because you have made yourself harder to reach. Sure, by leaving Facebook I would still be able to see my 2-3 closest friends and partner but that's it. Nobody in this day and age is going to send an email to me asking to come to a group event. Hell, I don't even know the email addresses of my closest friends, let alone our extended friend group. I can't even imagine how I would organize a 20+ Christmas event without it.
    - wolco 9y ago
      A christmas party for 20 people? Do you not have anyone's phone number? Or address? People will ask if you are going to the party and people tweet about a party or they will ig a photo about it. If you have no point of contact outside of facebookfriendgroup you are on the edge of losing connection to that group. It will start happening when people start moving over to snapchat one by one, joining new circles you are not part of, having smaller parties you didn't know about. If those casual friends are important you really need to strengthen those bonds outside of facebook. One day there will be a new smaller group.. will you make the cut?
Yizahi 9y ago
But you do live in an environment with lots of FB users and they make decisions that may affect you (up to and including laws).
- lavamantis 9y ago
  "Just because you do not take an interest in Facebook news, doesn't mean Facebook news won't take an interest in you" - Perecles
folksinger 9y ago
Ah, the age old argument for personal responsibility... "Oh, is the river polluted? Then don't go in the damn river! Use your head! Don't expect someone, or god forbid the government, to force someone to clean it up just so you can go fishing in the river!" It doesn't matter if you or I choose not to use Facebook. The rest of the planet is glued to their smartphones and phubbing us every time we leave the house and that affects us regardless of our choices.
- cgmg 9y ago
  Your analogy is ridiculous. In what way is polluting a river like hosting a social network on your own servers?
  - folksinger 9y ago
    The Facebook logo is everywhere. On the side of delivery vans, pizza boxes, business cards and paperback books. Public spaces are littered with people staring down at their phones. Our politics has been usurped by the machinations of social media. Pretending like an individual can simply logout of Facebook and not have to deal with the social consequences is what is ridiculous! I'll go full Godwin: There were probably less swastikas per square inch at the height of Nazi Germany than there are Facebook logos today. The perceived rise of authoritarianism of some political Other is nothing more than the actual authoritarianism of Facebook.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - theSpaceOctopus 9y ago
    > Your analogy is ridiculous. In what way is polluting a river like hosting a social network on your own servers? It's an analogy for the "age old personal responsibility argument", but if you want to get metaphorical then maybe society is the river, Facebook the pollutant? I mean come on man, it doesn't take a creative genius to connect the dots here, and it's certainly not ridiculous.
billmalarky 9y ago
>I don't like FB personally but don't understand the steady stream of criticism about -- that it's too addictive You're right, you don't understand. This is a problem that you don't personally deal with but the data shows that there is a problem. Many tech consumer products are specifically tailored to get a user more and more addicted to the service, similar to the way the food industry specifically tailors food products to make humans consume more and more of the food (salt/fat/sugar). Never-ending and constantly optimizing research and development goes into this addiction cycle since for many tech products revenue == traffic/engagement. Adding a little bit of "sweetness" to your product makes it more enjoyable, and that's a good thing. But capitalism is a never ending process of optimizing for profit so before long your product is so "sweet" it is causing serious issues for many people.
- dbmikus 9y ago
  I like this analogy for why Facebook should be regulated. We have no problem regulating food for health benefits, so to extend that to other items seems like a decent proposal. I believe it is harder to empirically calculate and observe negative psychological effects than to do the same for physiological effects, but psychological concerns are becoming more mainstream.
- wolco 9y ago
  The games facebook plays to get you to stay are as harmless as video games, Teaser tv promos or chain letters. The mass collection of data is the real harm. The slowly eroding public web is up there too.
- white-flame 9y ago
  Television is also likewise specifically tailored to get a user more and more addicted to its service. Yet it falls upon the media consumer to not get themselves addicted or wear blinders to anything else but their one program/network that encourages their particular leanings.
627467 9y ago
Like you I stop actively using FB for about a year now. I've considered deleting the profile but thought that is giving facebook too much importance (I would also hate that my grandparents can't find my old photos anymore). On the other hand I can see why people are treating facebook more like an utility and not a service in a competitive market: the size of its network is now huge and too many people rely on it to receive and propagate information. The problem with facebook, in my view, is they have (understandably) developed all these tools for you to easily add things to it but make zero meaningful effort to let you (as user) erase things you have place there. After a decade of using facebook, why can't I easily unlike everything I liked? why can't I go and unfollow (massively) "friends" from 10 years ago? why doesn't facebook REALLY delete my content when I tell it to? I am free to leave facebook or stop using it, but apparently I'm not sure to stop facebook from keep using my old content for eternity. if this was a company that could fold tomorrow, I wouldn't care about this. But its facebook. it's the power company, the water company, the government, and they have my data and does not let me trim it. Their algorithm acts like a "sad" person who after several desperate and failed attempts at getting my attention to use the service resort to showing my ancient posts/photos to people who are likely to interact with me so that I have to login and use it. It's a sad service.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  I think what makes me the most angry at Facebook is how impossible it is to liberate your data from Facebook. When you upload information/data to Facebook, you don't own it anymore; Facebook gives you no way to retrieve it. Sure, they offer an archive process which gives you a zip archive of your post history in HTML, but it's not in any format that's easy to parse or process. On top of that, Facebook events are impossible to get off platform because their API does not expose any way to grab them, which keeps event invites and communication completely locked into the platform. I'd be much more sympathetic to letting Facebook run amok if they had an actual story for meaningfully extracting data or interacting with your Facebook network without using their client. Then competitors to Facebook would actually stand a chance. But Facebook makes it as hard as possible to liberate your own data, which shows me that they have no intention on letting you leave once you're in.
s73ver_ 9y ago
I'm sorry, but I can't get behind this idea that you're not responsible for the platform you create. Quite frankly, I do believe FB has a moral obligation to what they've brought into the world.
cJ0th 9y ago
> FB is not responsible for verifying the truth of every FB news post I look at it this way: If FB wouldn't influence the content that you're looking at - e.g. they wouldn't go on fire if someone posts a nude photo - then it were alright to deny responsibility as they'd merely provide infrastructure. If, however, they do discriminate content they don't like then, given their sphere of influence, they have to be held responsible I think.
- rout39574 9y ago
  This is key. The phone company is a common carrier, and can reasonably claim not to discriminate. Facebook's entire reason to exist is to introspect on, and discriminate between, messages you send through them.
criddell 9y ago
> If you are addicted to FB you should do some soul searching. Facebook didn't just build something really cool and people got addicted to it. They built something really cool, then hired the smartest people to find ways to make it addictive. Remember this scene: https://youtu.be/YKRFlNryaWw?t=88 https://youtu.be/YKRFlNryaWw?t=88 If the Colonel simply makes great chicken that people want to eat, then I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If, on the other hand, he puts an addictive chemical into it that makes you crave it fortnightly, that's a different thing. Facebook has spent a lot of time and money making itself addictive.
free_everybody 9y ago
You're completely right on a personal level. People should really do some thinking about why they spend so much time on Facebook. However, there is a separate discussion about Facebook's effect on the community. Zoom out and you can't see any individuals, just large trends. Say 30% of Americans feel like they are addicted to Facebook. Maybe, as a community, we should do something about that.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

a3n 9y ago

Social media will have their "cigarette moment," after enough time has passed to do the studies.

snomad 9y ago
These statements + the 60 minutes piece awhile back (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/ https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/) make this a very likely outcome. I wonder what the equivalent warning label + restrictions will look like.
- ashark 9y ago
  Removing much of the motivation for this crap by outlawing exploitation of user data, and making even having it very expensive and/or risky, through huge bond or insurance requirements to cover data breaches for anyone who stores such things, would be a good place to start. And yes, that should absolutely apply to more traditional data-mining companies (credit card companies, for example).

Super_Jambo 9y ago

Because facebook is a handy label for all forms of malicious capitalism. And the excesses of malicious capitalism are becoming sufficiently extreme that people are starting to notice. It's much easier to notice this in new technologies rather than old ones you're already comfortable with. So facebook gets the flak, which is deserved but lots of other people avoid it. Take soft drinks which are terrible for peoples health. Your profit comes from: 1) Convincing people that buying your drink will make them popular & happy. 2) Convincing the government to keep corn subsidies. 3) Convincing everyone that calories in calories out and self control are the _real_ method to health. Our sugar water isn't at fault it's your personal weakness! We're in a situation where powerful companies use their economic clout to buy off the government and convince the population of falsehoods so they can make more profit. This isn't new but since we've gotten pretty optimised on at solving genuine human needs (companies vs entropy) is much harder to profit from than fooling suckers into bad choices (companies vs irrational monkey brains). So now all our most profitable companies largely work to create little anti-competitive fiefdoms and to fool people into harming themselves. So of course people are going to point out that this is terrible and we should probably do something to regulate it's excess.

ams6110 9y ago
A soft drink maker's profit comes from making something its customers like and want to pay for. Busybodies notwithstanding.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  You forgot the part of shaping public opinion that their products are not a health issue and having the public subsidize their main ingredient. Even if you don't drink soft drinks you still subsidize health effects and corn and sugar.
- specialist 9y ago
  If soft drink mfgs had to actually pay for the water, sugar, pollution, and diabetes treatments, they wouldn't be profitable. Externalize costs, privatize profits.
- pixl97 9y ago
  A methamphetamine dealers profit comes from making something their customers like and want to pay for... etc.
- groby_b 9y ago
  The same applies to drug dealers. Busybodies notwithstanding. But underneath that simplistic surface view, you're dealing with somebody who inflicts cost on society as a whole to extract profit for themselves. And they extract it in a way that individuals don't necessarily care to fix. And so, you'll need somebody to stand up for a functioning society. That would then be your "busybodies". (Sure, there's the libertarian fantasy of complete self-determination. Which inevitably leads to a might-makes-right world. Most of us have decided long ago we'd rather live in a civilized society)
rayvd 9y ago
I worry far more about malicious collectivism.

diogenescynic 9y ago

Read the book “Irresistable: The Rise of Addictive Technology” and I suspect you’ll have a different opinion. People get addicted to everything that exists and you’re essentially blaming the victim. The difference is also that Facebook designs its Newsfeed/Instagram like a slot-machine that encourages people to just keep hitting refresh. Maybe they’ll see something new or they’ll get a like... Also, most people aren’t nearly as smart as the people on this thread. So you have fairly average folks getting hooked on tech that was designed to be that way by psychology majors and data scientists. Also, Facebook could do a lot better in removing propaganda and obvious lies. They just don’t want to remove all the hundreds of millions of fake accounts they report as real to their ad buyers.

lavamantis 9y ago
With all the resources at their disposal, they could perhaps bring in a professional editorial staff to rank each news source based on some unbiased (ahem) and transparent criteria like # of sources for a story, past accuracy, level of bias, etc. Still let people click and post whatever but apply an easily visible and understandable "news" score.

dalbasal 9y ago

I was with you until recently. Don't like it, don't use it. I log in once a month. Never felt strongly about FB one way or another. But lately, I flipped. I think responsibility needs to correlate to some extent with power, to be useful. FB have power now, big power. They are not some site, they're a core social and political institution of society. In some circles, FB's just a very common way to conduct part of your social life. In that context, complaining about FB is like complaining about your local town square. It's noisy and filthy and making our social time suck. I consider this an appropriate complaint, considering what FB is and does. "Go start your own social network" is a red herring. It's like saying "if you don't like this country, leave". At least, I consider these similar. On the news point, I consider this a seperate point and a bigger deal. This is what flipped me. FB is the world's most important news outlet. I think this is undeniable in 2017. They have tremendous power (and responsibility) in this role. News/journalism is an institution of democracy and political life generally. FB decide who sees what news, and this is a huge deal. If they peddle crap quality news, the overall quality of journalism in society deteriorates. The quality of news (taken as a whole, including the news bubbles and everything else) on FB is terrible. It's a valid complaint and we should be louder about it.

Retric 9y ago
FB is very much falling into a local not global optimum. Social networks are optimizing for the derivative of peoples actions. A/B testing to see what causes more clicks etc. However, people are complex enough that they notice patterns and change how they approach things. Some of the most frequent users suddenly chose to quit. I remember seeing a slightly different discussion on HN ~5 years ago with almost the same arguments and thinking it was Déjà Vu because it was so similar to another HN post. Which get's a very different response than the first time around, because people change. Yesterday FB may have been the worlds most important news source, today less so, and long term people will treat it as just another tabloid. In that context, starting your own 'social network' will eventually be good advice, because trust is much easier to lose than gain.
zupreme 9y ago
I love your comment but disagree on one point. I don't think Facebook has ANY obligation to improve the quality of the "news" shared on it. I favor freedom of speech and freedom of association. If I have a friend who keeps posting BS articles from shady sources (and I do) then I just block them from my feed or simply ignore their posts about current events and conspiracy theories. I think asking FB, or any other platform, to start policing the quality of what we post is dangerous. What happens is if a story breaks that official authorities deny, but which is actually true. Would you want FB being the arbiter of truth, in such a case, or would you prefer for individuals (preferably alot of them) to be free to do their own research and to come to their own conclusions?

kolbe 9y ago

I'd love (love!) for the answer to all questions about addiction to be "suffer your own consequences," but the US exists as a massive welfare state where intelligent and conscientious citizens should try to ensure that the investments they're making in the lower classes are going to better use than heroin and acting as proxy votes to foreign regimes in US elections. But we're not even close to a libertarian enough nation to just ignore the problems that corporations create for our citizens, even if those problems could be avoided by personal responsibility. And "soul searching" is waaaay too far up Maslow's hierarchy for most US citizens to even start considering.

MsMowz 9y ago
We don't have a welfare state. We probably have fewer social services than any other industrialized country.
- pixl97 9y ago
  >fewer social services than any other industrialized country. Conversely your own argument can simply be stated as "We have a smaller welfare state than most other industrialized countries" So I don't think you successfully argued that we don't have a welfare state at all.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    The existence of welfare does not a welfare state make.
    - pixl97 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state By the technical definition, yea, it does seem to.
  - MsMowz 9y ago
    If any state that isn't just police and a military counts as a welfare state, then I don't think that's a useful definition of welfare state.

0xfeba 9y ago

Some businesses rely heavily on FB and other social media for getting customers. Other people only get family updates from it. It's getting harder and harder to "just don't use" social media.

sasvari 9y ago
It's getting harder and harder to "just don't use" social media. I don't know about the business perspective, but why is it hard not to use facebook for people? It's a serious question. Everybody I know (me included) who is not on facebook has no problem with it, and it certainly isn't getting harder.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Because by getting off Facebook, you end up missing a lot of what you are used to. If your life and your friend's life is not on it, this won't affect you. But if you and your social network has let Facebook grow as a dependency, you can't easily get out of it. The only way it could work is if you manage to migrate your entire social circle off it and it won't happen. By getting off Facebook, you simply make yourself hard to reach and it will make your casual relationships rot and die. When my friends create an event, they click "add all members of 'amazing friend group' to event" and that's it. Nobody is going to then track down the one person who decided to leave the group for a casual event like "5-7 beer this Friday". Even for big events, you may end up being let out simply because you have made yourself harder to reach. Sure, by leaving Facebook I would still be able to see my 2-3 closest friends and partner but that's it. Nobody in this day and age is going to send an email to me asking to come to a group event. Hell, I don't even know the email addresses of my closest friends, let alone our extended friend group. I can't even imagine how I would organize a 20+ Christmas event without it.
  - wolco 9y ago
    A christmas party for 20 people? Do you not have anyone's phone number? Or address? People will ask if you are going to the party and people tweet about a party or they will ig a photo about it. If you have no point of contact outside of facebookfriendgroup you are on the edge of losing connection to that group. It will start happening when people start moving over to snapchat one by one, joining new circles you are not part of, having smaller parties you didn't know about. If those casual friends are important you really need to strengthen those bonds outside of facebook. One day there will be a new smaller group.. will you make the cut?

Yizahi 9y ago

But you do live in an environment with lots of FB users and they make decisions that may affect you (up to and including laws).

lavamantis 9y ago
"Just because you do not take an interest in Facebook news, doesn't mean Facebook news won't take an interest in you" - Perecles

folksinger 9y ago

Ah, the age old argument for personal responsibility... "Oh, is the river polluted? Then don't go in the damn river! Use your head! Don't expect someone, or god forbid the government, to force someone to clean it up just so you can go fishing in the river!" It doesn't matter if you or I choose not to use Facebook. The rest of the planet is glued to their smartphones and phubbing us every time we leave the house and that affects us regardless of our choices.

cgmg 9y ago
Your analogy is ridiculous. In what way is polluting a river like hosting a social network on your own servers?
- folksinger 9y ago
  The Facebook logo is everywhere. On the side of delivery vans, pizza boxes, business cards and paperback books. Public spaces are littered with people staring down at their phones. Our politics has been usurped by the machinations of social media. Pretending like an individual can simply logout of Facebook and not have to deal with the social consequences is what is ridiculous! I'll go full Godwin: There were probably less swastikas per square inch at the height of Nazi Germany than there are Facebook logos today. The perceived rise of authoritarianism of some political Other is nothing more than the actual authoritarianism of Facebook.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- theSpaceOctopus 9y ago
  > Your analogy is ridiculous. In what way is polluting a river like hosting a social network on your own servers? It's an analogy for the "age old personal responsibility argument", but if you want to get metaphorical then maybe society is the river, Facebook the pollutant? I mean come on man, it doesn't take a creative genius to connect the dots here, and it's certainly not ridiculous.

billmalarky 9y ago

>I don't like FB personally but don't understand the steady stream of criticism about -- that it's too addictive You're right, you don't understand. This is a problem that you don't personally deal with but the data shows that there is a problem. Many tech consumer products are specifically tailored to get a user more and more addicted to the service, similar to the way the food industry specifically tailors food products to make humans consume more and more of the food (salt/fat/sugar). Never-ending and constantly optimizing research and development goes into this addiction cycle since for many tech products revenue == traffic/engagement. Adding a little bit of "sweetness" to your product makes it more enjoyable, and that's a good thing. But capitalism is a never ending process of optimizing for profit so before long your product is so "sweet" it is causing serious issues for many people.

dbmikus 9y ago
I like this analogy for why Facebook should be regulated. We have no problem regulating food for health benefits, so to extend that to other items seems like a decent proposal. I believe it is harder to empirically calculate and observe negative psychological effects than to do the same for physiological effects, but psychological concerns are becoming more mainstream.
wolco 9y ago
The games facebook plays to get you to stay are as harmless as video games, Teaser tv promos or chain letters. The mass collection of data is the real harm. The slowly eroding public web is up there too.
white-flame 9y ago
Television is also likewise specifically tailored to get a user more and more addicted to its service. Yet it falls upon the media consumer to not get themselves addicted or wear blinders to anything else but their one program/network that encourages their particular leanings.

627467 9y ago

Like you I stop actively using FB for about a year now. I've considered deleting the profile but thought that is giving facebook too much importance (I would also hate that my grandparents can't find my old photos anymore). On the other hand I can see why people are treating facebook more like an utility and not a service in a competitive market: the size of its network is now huge and too many people rely on it to receive and propagate information. The problem with facebook, in my view, is they have (understandably) developed all these tools for you to easily add things to it but make zero meaningful effort to let you (as user) erase things you have place there. After a decade of using facebook, why can't I easily unlike everything I liked? why can't I go and unfollow (massively) "friends" from 10 years ago? why doesn't facebook REALLY delete my content when I tell it to? I am free to leave facebook or stop using it, but apparently I'm not sure to stop facebook from keep using my old content for eternity. if this was a company that could fold tomorrow, I wouldn't care about this. But its facebook. it's the power company, the water company, the government, and they have my data and does not let me trim it. Their algorithm acts like a "sad" person who after several desperate and failed attempts at getting my attention to use the service resort to showing my ancient posts/photos to people who are likely to interact with me so that I have to login and use it. It's a sad service.

Karrot_Kream 9y ago
I think what makes me the most angry at Facebook is how impossible it is to liberate your data from Facebook. When you upload information/data to Facebook, you don't own it anymore; Facebook gives you no way to retrieve it. Sure, they offer an archive process which gives you a zip archive of your post history in HTML, but it's not in any format that's easy to parse or process. On top of that, Facebook events are impossible to get off platform because their API does not expose any way to grab them, which keeps event invites and communication completely locked into the platform. I'd be much more sympathetic to letting Facebook run amok if they had an actual story for meaningfully extracting data or interacting with your Facebook network without using their client. Then competitors to Facebook would actually stand a chance. But Facebook makes it as hard as possible to liberate your own data, which shows me that they have no intention on letting you leave once you're in.

s73ver_ 9y ago

I'm sorry, but I can't get behind this idea that you're not responsible for the platform you create. Quite frankly, I do believe FB has a moral obligation to what they've brought into the world.

cJ0th 9y ago

> FB is not responsible for verifying the truth of every FB news post I look at it this way: If FB wouldn't influence the content that you're looking at - e.g. they wouldn't go on fire if someone posts a nude photo - then it were alright to deny responsibility as they'd merely provide infrastructure. If, however, they do discriminate content they don't like then, given their sphere of influence, they have to be held responsible I think.

rout39574 9y ago
This is key. The phone company is a common carrier, and can reasonably claim not to discriminate. Facebook's entire reason to exist is to introspect on, and discriminate between, messages you send through them.

criddell 9y ago

> If you are addicted to FB you should do some soul searching. Facebook didn't just build something really cool and people got addicted to it. They built something really cool, then hired the smartest people to find ways to make it addictive. Remember this scene: https://youtu.be/YKRFlNryaWw?t=88 https://youtu.be/YKRFlNryaWw?t=88 If the Colonel simply makes great chicken that people want to eat, then I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If, on the other hand, he puts an addictive chemical into it that makes you crave it fortnightly, that's a different thing. Facebook has spent a lot of time and money making itself addictive.

free_everybody 9y ago

You're completely right on a personal level. People should really do some thinking about why they spend so much time on Facebook. However, there is a separate discussion about Facebook's effect on the community. Zoom out and you can't see any individuals, just large trends. Say 30% of Americans feel like they are addicted to Facebook. Maybe, as a community, we should do something about that.