3 ms·

It's funny, because for me the primary benefit of Facebook is events. Keeping track of events with calendar invites is much more clunky and higher friction. Mes

It's funny, because for me the primary benefit of Facebook is events. Keeping track of events with calendar invites is much more clunky and higher friction. Messenger is just walled-garden email and I could live without it, but I have no idea how to do community events as well as I can with Facebook. And it's funny because contrary to the "Facebook as hypnotist" narrative (which is real) Facebook is a really fantastic tool for getting people together talking face to face and even working together on things.

Spooky23 9y ago
My kids school uses signup genius. There are a few solutions
josephv 9y ago
FB is evil because it can be loosely coupled with trump, not because of any merit. We all knew this data was collected and out there. You do you, everyone on the internet is actively trading privacy for functionality. Don't stop using a service that benefits you because the current news and/or political cycle is hyping an issue. Don't want to be preachy, but if you've found something that works for you, forget all these haters, this is all manufactured by someone that shorted FB, I promise.
Jemmeh 9y ago
It just depends on what you use it for. A lot of my friends have cheap phone plans with low network minutes/texts but unlimited wifi. Facebook Messenger becomes a cheap phone in this case. There's alternatives, but I'd have to convince everyone I know to swap to them...not gonna happen. Meetup.com maybe? But I agree, I use Facebook Events a lot. It comes back to that issue of "everyone is here and using it, so this is where events are posted".
Karrot_Kream 9y ago
Until you realize that FB has no API to get events out of FB. FB might be useful but it's the same usefulness as having an email thread with a calendar invite. They don't let you export your event data in any meaningful way to keep you on the platform.
- vlovich123 9y ago
  My FB events appear in my iCal just fine via CalDav. Not sure why you think you can't grab your data.
  - Karrot_Kream 9y ago
    It's not just about events automatically appearing. First of all, I'm not sure of a way to do that without individually exporting events, maybe if I setup FB emails for events, I could get GMail to auto-add them, but I don't use GMail so it would take more setup to ingest invites automatically. But even then, there's no way to RSVP inside the calendar invite itself. The interface is opaque, they let you read their data, but not interact with it in a programmatic way despite it being _your_ friend network and _your_ event.
seandougall 9y ago
If Facebook decides you should be allowed to talk face to face and work together, that is. One of the big problems with Facebook events is that the algorithm filters them out pretty aggressively unless the creator pays to promote them.

Spooky23 9y ago

My kids school uses signup genius. There are a few solutions

josephv 9y ago

FB is evil because it can be loosely coupled with trump, not because of any merit. We all knew this data was collected and out there. You do you, everyone on the internet is actively trading privacy for functionality. Don't stop using a service that benefits you because the current news and/or political cycle is hyping an issue. Don't want to be preachy, but if you've found something that works for you, forget all these haters, this is all manufactured by someone that shorted FB, I promise.

Jemmeh 9y ago

It just depends on what you use it for. A lot of my friends have cheap phone plans with low network minutes/texts but unlimited wifi. Facebook Messenger becomes a cheap phone in this case. There's alternatives, but I'd have to convince everyone I know to swap to them...not gonna happen. Meetup.com maybe? But I agree, I use Facebook Events a lot. It comes back to that issue of "everyone is here and using it, so this is where events are posted".

Karrot_Kream 9y ago

Until you realize that FB has no API to get events out of FB. FB might be useful but it's the same usefulness as having an email thread with a calendar invite. They don't let you export your event data in any meaningful way to keep you on the platform.

vlovich123 9y ago
My FB events appear in my iCal just fine via CalDav. Not sure why you think you can't grab your data.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  It's not just about events automatically appearing. First of all, I'm not sure of a way to do that without individually exporting events, maybe if I setup FB emails for events, I could get GMail to auto-add them, but I don't use GMail so it would take more setup to ingest invites automatically. But even then, there's no way to RSVP inside the calendar invite itself. The interface is opaque, they let you read their data, but not interact with it in a programmatic way despite it being _your_ friend network and _your_ event.

seandougall 9y ago

If Facebook decides you should be allowed to talk face to face and work together, that is. One of the big problems with Facebook events is that the algorithm filters them out pretty aggressively unless the creator pays to promote them.