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I can attest that this would be an effective technique, because recently I accidentally did the opposite. A while back, I did a big clean up of all my groups,

I can attest that this would be an effective technique, because recently I accidentally did the opposite. A while back, I did a big clean up of all my groups, likes and (most of my) friends, which greatly improved the signal to noise. Before that, I hardly ever checked FB because there just wasn't anything I really cared about, and if there was it was too well buried. Now, though I find myself checking it, just in case there is something worth seeing. I particularly started doing this after happening on two big surprise stories on there from small businesses that made me think "Lucky I was scrolling through FB, otherwise I wouldn't have known about that". The signal to noise is better, but the problem remains the signal isn't worth receiving most of the time.

manmal 8y ago
FOMO is the only reason I haven’t deleted FB. There are some could-be-important-for-work people on there that I would rather not lose contact with. Other than that, I like doing real life things with people 100x more than seeing their polished vacation pics.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Many interesting events in my area are propagated on FB exclusively, including meetups of my friends :-/
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    Be the change. People are lazy in general and will use whatever is easy and others use not giving too much thought to consequences. In my circles I always openly say "I'd love to, but I don't use Facebook" - so if someone wants to have me included, they need to think about a more democratic way to include others. It's not egoistic - many other people don't use FB either. Excluding them just because a group of people is too blind to notice is a very negative approach.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      > many other people don't use FB either This is the problem, I'd be literally the only one. I tried it once - of course they didn't exclude me, but a lot of info got to me too late (when I had other plans already) and smaller events not at all.
      - ryandrake 8y ago
        The way I see it is: if friends won’t stay in contact with me without me being on Facebook... then they are not really friends. Leaving FB actually improved my social life because it became clear who were the real friends.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        They do stay in contact! This is about small-ish events like a friend posting "hey guys, I'm hosting a dinner tomorrow". I can't blame them for forgetting about me (our group is rather large), some of them don't even have my phone number.
    - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
      > Be the change. [...] > I always openly say "I'd love to, but I don't use Facebook" It's called network effect and works by majority. If most of your peers keeps using $foo you can only choose between using it or being left out - both are options that one dislikes.
      - oska 8y ago
        Intolerant minorities have a lot of power to effect change. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- ryandrake 8y ago
  If you believe this, you can measure it. Take a year and write down all the truly important things that you see on social media, then cross them out when you hear about them outside of social media. I would bet that at the end of the experiment you can count your list with one hand or less. FB has made billions instilling this FOMO into their users’ heads. It’s fake.

manmal 8y ago

FOMO is the only reason I haven’t deleted FB. There are some could-be-important-for-work people on there that I would rather not lose contact with. Other than that, I like doing real life things with people 100x more than seeing their polished vacation pics.

TomMarius 8y ago
Many interesting events in my area are propagated on FB exclusively, including meetups of my friends :-/
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Be the change. People are lazy in general and will use whatever is easy and others use not giving too much thought to consequences. In my circles I always openly say "I'd love to, but I don't use Facebook" - so if someone wants to have me included, they need to think about a more democratic way to include others. It's not egoistic - many other people don't use FB either. Excluding them just because a group of people is too blind to notice is a very negative approach.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    > many other people don't use FB either This is the problem, I'd be literally the only one. I tried it once - of course they didn't exclude me, but a lot of info got to me too late (when I had other plans already) and smaller events not at all.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      The way I see it is: if friends won’t stay in contact with me without me being on Facebook... then they are not really friends. Leaving FB actually improved my social life because it became clear who were the real friends.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        They do stay in contact! This is about small-ish events like a friend posting "hey guys, I'm hosting a dinner tomorrow". I can't blame them for forgetting about me (our group is rather large), some of them don't even have my phone number.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    > Be the change. [...] > I always openly say "I'd love to, but I don't use Facebook" It's called network effect and works by majority. If most of your peers keeps using $foo you can only choose between using it or being left out - both are options that one dislikes.
    - oska 8y ago
      Intolerant minorities have a lot of power to effect change. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15#.z5ry4bucq https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
ryandrake 8y ago
If you believe this, you can measure it. Take a year and write down all the truly important things that you see on social media, then cross them out when you hear about them outside of social media. I would bet that at the end of the experiment you can count your list with one hand or less. FB has made billions instilling this FOMO into their users’ heads. It’s fake.