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To me the greatest issue with the Facebook 'community' is that it is the conglomeration (the umbrella) of sub-communities which, in not being a Facebook member,

To me the greatest issue with the Facebook 'community' is that it is the conglomeration (the umbrella) of sub-communities which, in not being a Facebook member, excludes me from accessing any of them. It's basically like having to obtain a passport just to enter the neighbouring town's pub. A specific example: a local tabletop gaming store has a 'Facebook community' but no alternative forum. There is potential friendship and worthwhile discourse to be had by joining the community, but it is not accessible without joining Facebook. This problem just doesn't seem significant because so many are already in the 'Facebook community' already. It's not that Facebook set the rules or defines the community, it's that they own the front door and you need their key to enter.

dmead 9y ago
yea, but they're also handing out keys for 'free'.
- pjlegato 9y ago
  It's not free. The price is agreeing to allow your private data to be mined forever. You're the product, not the customer.
  - headsoup 9y ago
    I think you may have missed the quotation marks around free there ;)
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    What private data do you need to submit to only participate in some forum?
  - blhack 9y ago
    So don't give them your private data. Just lie to them. https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ This will give you everything facebook wants.
    - danmaz74 9y ago
      You can't do that if your goal is to participate in a real life community like the op was saying...
      - blhack 9y ago
        Give them your real name, and then lie about everything else. This is where all of the anti-facebook sentiment loses me. Just put fake data in there.
        quickthrower2 9y ago
        You can't lie about the groups you use, or the sites you visit that track you via FB, or the friends you add.
        blhack 9y ago
        So don't do those things. It just doesn't make any sense to me how people expect that you can use a web service without the webservice like...knowing that you're using it? Reddit knows what subreddits I'm subbed to. Usenet servers know what groups I post to. Gmail knows what email I get (sortof) etc. If I didn't want anybody to know that I was interested in amateur radio, then I wouldn't post to /r/amateuradio with my real name. This is a classic "have your cake and eat it too". You can't both share your real name with people and also not share your real name with those same people at the same time.
        quickthrower2 9y ago
        It depends on how much you trust the web service with your data and how much meta data they gather about you, and how much you care about that. It is not as simple as you are making out because of 1. The vast amount of meta data that can be mined from your browser requests, scripts running on sites, your logging into multiple devices. 2. The scripts that run on other sites when you are not using FB, that know your FB identity or might send data back to FB. Safe to assume it's being shared with 3rd parties. Safe to assume those parties are in different countries with different laws. 3. The amount of computational power FB has, machine learning technology etc. 4. What we learned from Snowden. It is naive to think of giving information to Facebook as being the same as giving it to a small community site running PHPBB. There are personal privacy concerns, as well as aggregate ones. I.e. by being on facebook you are helping other's to have less privacy unless you use it in a very restricted way.
denimnerd 9y ago
Facebook killed my favorite real community's local discussion forum on their own hosted website. Everyone just uses the Facebook group now and so I can't just leave facebook which leaving the communication I have with this group.
- tokyodude 9y ago
  I had an active forum before facebook and twitter. the forum died and was not transferred to facebook. Rather it seems like people’s free time to participate in tb forum got occupied with their time on fb and twitter. Unfortunatelt neither fb nor twitter are really designed to support forum style interaction. No list of topics and threads
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    My understanding is marketplace is killing a lot of neighbor garage sale facebook groups.
golergka 9y ago
You have to own an internet-connected device and have internet access. My point is, Facebook is a de-facto standard for almost any non-technical community these days, and if not Facebook, then it's some other social platform, like Whatsapp or Telegram. Turns out, centralized platforms are much more user-friendly, have better network effects and easier to set up and administer for majority of users.
codeulike 9y ago
I agree with your sentiment, its a shame to see Facebook displacing independent forums. But, just to offer another aspect to think about: I have a child with a rare and serious medical condition. There is a facebook group for that condition, and nearly every family in the UK who is affected is in that facebook group. Its very powerful to be able to share notes like that, between us we are able to zero in on best practice and then suggest things to doctors. I suspect that without Facebooks reach we would not have been able to get so many people in one virtual space. I notice there are facebook groups for practically every rare condition you can imagine. tldr: Facebooks ability to reach beyond the sort of people that sign up for forums can be very useful in certain important scenarios.
- gregknicholson 9y ago
  A single communication network with wide reach is very valuable, for exactly this reason. It's not necessary — and I think it's harmful — for that network to be controlled on the whim of one person (assuming you accept that Zuckerberg isn't a robot or a lizard or something).
  - dfxm12 9y ago
    Do you really think Zuckerberg is personally concerned with the "Rare disease - UK" Facebook group to the point where he personally will wipe it out arbitrarily? What if this group was in Reddit and all of a sudden the mod, on a whim, locked all the threads? What if this group met in the local community center and the building owner, on a whim, decided to sell the building to someone who didn't want such groups to meet there? Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". If your community owes its existence to it, they are at their whim, and in a way, that's the cost of doing business. This isn't unique to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. If the community is strong, they can find a way to overcome such whims.
    - gregknicholson 9y ago
      > Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". This is false. Pen, paper, English and walking is a communication network. If there are multiple competing implementations of a shared spec, in practice no one group can control it. (This is why it's important to have multiple competing web browser engines.)

dmead 9y ago

yea, but they're also handing out keys for 'free'.

pjlegato 9y ago
It's not free. The price is agreeing to allow your private data to be mined forever. You're the product, not the customer.
- headsoup 9y ago
  I think you may have missed the quotation marks around free there ;)
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  What private data do you need to submit to only participate in some forum?
- blhack 9y ago
  So don't give them your private data. Just lie to them. https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ This will give you everything facebook wants.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    You can't do that if your goal is to participate in a real life community like the op was saying...
    - blhack 9y ago
      Give them your real name, and then lie about everything else. This is where all of the anti-facebook sentiment loses me. Just put fake data in there.
      - quickthrower2 9y ago
        You can't lie about the groups you use, or the sites you visit that track you via FB, or the friends you add.
        blhack 9y ago
        So don't do those things. It just doesn't make any sense to me how people expect that you can use a web service without the webservice like...knowing that you're using it? Reddit knows what subreddits I'm subbed to. Usenet servers know what groups I post to. Gmail knows what email I get (sortof) etc. If I didn't want anybody to know that I was interested in amateur radio, then I wouldn't post to /r/amateuradio with my real name. This is a classic "have your cake and eat it too". You can't both share your real name with people and also not share your real name with those same people at the same time.
        quickthrower2 9y ago
        It depends on how much you trust the web service with your data and how much meta data they gather about you, and how much you care about that. It is not as simple as you are making out because of 1. The vast amount of meta data that can be mined from your browser requests, scripts running on sites, your logging into multiple devices. 2. The scripts that run on other sites when you are not using FB, that know your FB identity or might send data back to FB. Safe to assume it's being shared with 3rd parties. Safe to assume those parties are in different countries with different laws. 3. The amount of computational power FB has, machine learning technology etc. 4. What we learned from Snowden. It is naive to think of giving information to Facebook as being the same as giving it to a small community site running PHPBB. There are personal privacy concerns, as well as aggregate ones. I.e. by being on facebook you are helping other's to have less privacy unless you use it in a very restricted way.

denimnerd 9y ago

Facebook killed my favorite real community's local discussion forum on their own hosted website. Everyone just uses the Facebook group now and so I can't just leave facebook which leaving the communication I have with this group.

tokyodude 9y ago
I had an active forum before facebook and twitter. the forum died and was not transferred to facebook. Rather it seems like people’s free time to participate in tb forum got occupied with their time on fb and twitter. Unfortunatelt neither fb nor twitter are really designed to support forum style interaction. No list of topics and threads
- sharemywin 9y ago
  My understanding is marketplace is killing a lot of neighbor garage sale facebook groups.

golergka 9y ago

You have to own an internet-connected device and have internet access. My point is, Facebook is a de-facto standard for almost any non-technical community these days, and if not Facebook, then it's some other social platform, like Whatsapp or Telegram. Turns out, centralized platforms are much more user-friendly, have better network effects and easier to set up and administer for majority of users.

codeulike 9y ago

I agree with your sentiment, its a shame to see Facebook displacing independent forums. But, just to offer another aspect to think about: I have a child with a rare and serious medical condition. There is a facebook group for that condition, and nearly every family in the UK who is affected is in that facebook group. Its very powerful to be able to share notes like that, between us we are able to zero in on best practice and then suggest things to doctors. I suspect that without Facebooks reach we would not have been able to get so many people in one virtual space. I notice there are facebook groups for practically every rare condition you can imagine. tldr: Facebooks ability to reach beyond the sort of people that sign up for forums can be very useful in certain important scenarios.

gregknicholson 9y ago
A single communication network with wide reach is very valuable, for exactly this reason. It's not necessary — and I think it's harmful — for that network to be controlled on the whim of one person (assuming you accept that Zuckerberg isn't a robot or a lizard or something).
- dfxm12 9y ago
  Do you really think Zuckerberg is personally concerned with the "Rare disease - UK" Facebook group to the point where he personally will wipe it out arbitrarily? What if this group was in Reddit and all of a sudden the mod, on a whim, locked all the threads? What if this group met in the local community center and the building owner, on a whim, decided to sell the building to someone who didn't want such groups to meet there? Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". If your community owes its existence to it, they are at their whim, and in a way, that's the cost of doing business. This isn't unique to Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg. If the community is strong, they can find a way to overcome such whims.
  - gregknicholson 9y ago
    > Someone has to be in charge of a "single communication network". This is false. Pen, paper, English and walking is a communication network. If there are multiple competing implementations of a shared spec, in practice no one group can control it. (This is why it's important to have multiple competing web browser engines.)