7 ms·

Ask HN: Knowing what we know about Facebook, why do you still have an account?

36 points by cityzen 8y ago

esotericn 8y ago
Ultimately explainable by the fact that extremely few, possibly zero people actually live their life according to principles. Everyone has their pet topic, everyone has their set of vices. I don't have a Facebook account, but I do own a (non-electric) car. I'm very much aware of how bad it is. Giving it up would restrict my life dramatically, so I don't. (I'd love a Model 3 when they finally hit the UK).
Domark 8y ago
Facebook is just another website. Sure it has problems, but it’s super handy for keeping up with a ‘distributed’ family across the globe. What are you fishing for?
- cityzen 8y ago
  I'm only fishing for understanding. I'm not judging you but it is honestly shocking to read Facebook's crisis framed as, "Sure it has problems but...". I appreciate your honest feedback.
- dxhdr 8y ago
  > Facebook is just another website. Strangely this website comes pre-installed on every phone I buy, and I can't uninstall it; the best I can do is deactivate. How do I get rid of this "website"?
simonsarris 8y ago
To share updates with my friends and family, buy used stuff on the marketplace, get info and be helpful to townspeople on town happenings from my town group (where I've also met some nice people that I now buy beef and eggs from), etc. Nothing in recent history has changed any of it's utility for me.
ineedasername 8y ago
I haven't bothered to delete it because I'm not very exposed to privacy issue there (I don't given them much of anything to sell) I don't actively post much of anything at all, but within my family it is considered a social norm. I'm expected to occasionally check in and give a like to some posted photos, and send the obligatory "Happy <something> | <congratulations>" here and there.
- catacombs 8y ago
  > I'm not very exposed to privacy issue there (I don't given them much of anything to sell) Facebook still likely has a lot of usage data about you. For example, they could make a profile of you based on the people you visit and interact with.
bufferoverflow 8y ago
Don't give them any information you don't want them to have. I only keep the account to log in into various services.
- gaius 8y ago
  Don't give them any information you don't want them to have. They buy data direct from airlines and credit cards now.
  - bufferoverflow 8y ago
    So whether you use FB anymore or not, doesn't affect this.
psychometry 8y ago
Because for keeping in touch with people and being aware of events, there isn't a better alternative.
carlesfe 8y ago
I don't. But it isn't because I disagree with FB's politics. It's because all my friends (Europeans around 35 yo) just stopped using it. They all moved to Instagram. Facebook (the product) will be a desert by 3-5 years. However, Facebook Inc. had a lot of hindsight and bough Whatsapp and Instagram. I commute via train every day. 99% of the phone screens are either Insta or Whatsapp. Facebook Inc. wins. PS: I miss Facebook (the product). I hate Insta. I loathe the fact that it's all pics and no text. I have no good way to share ideas or jokes with my friends. But if I want to know what my friends are up to, that is the app I have to use.
- nakedrobot2 8y ago
  Excuse this old geezer, but.... how do you have discussions on instagram? how is instagram replacing groups and forums for people who share specific interests? this "we don't use facebook anymore, we use instagram" seems for a narrow usecase.
  - AndrewDucker 8y ago
    Or events.
  - reidjs 8y ago
    You can direct message and do group chats. To set up events you can just message a bunch of people time and place.
dzek69 8y ago
Because nothing on my account is actually private. I use fb mostly for groups (buy/sell groups, some technical knowledge sharing groups) and being up to date with band/companies news. I accept only people I really know and like, but I rarely invite anyone first. I don't "share my life" nor I look at other people posts about their lives (most of them haven't written a wall post in months anyway). I share "life stuff" with people in person and looks like most people are doing the same. Oh, and while a lot of people use Messenger I completely don't. Not at all.
- dzek69 8y ago
  To not lie about Messenger: I use it on webpage directly as a private contact initiation when buying/selling stuff. We exchange telephone numbers and that's usually all. And when somebody starts a random conversation (hadn't happen in a while) I just redirect them somewhere else. I also keep away from FB/Messenger apps and I avoid visiting FB on phone. On my pc I block trackers and stuff. I think all of above is sane way of using Facebook.
cheeze 8y ago
Beer. Im part of a bunch of private beer raffle groups. It goes like this 1. Someone buys a rare and sought after beer (say, at a release they waited hours in line for) 2. They come up with a valuation 3. They post the beer for N spots in one of these groups (almost always 10 spots, 0-9) 4. Folks buy spots by claiming number 5. Everyone pays up 6. Once full, the next Illinois fireball pick 3 "fireball number" (0-9) that gets drawn decides winner 7 winner gets shipped their beer These communities only exist on Facebook. And in that sense, fb works very well as a way to keep people honest (must use real accounts, must be vouched for to become a member) Yeah its a niche, but it's my niche.
- catacombs 8y ago
  Great. But, Facebook is surely collecting a shitton of data from you and the other beer group members and, possibly, selling it to data brokers, who, in turn, sell it to beer advertisement companies. You are the product.
  - jarfil 8y ago
    But he gets beer, so what if some beer companies know that he likes beer and decide to pay someone to know what kind of beer he's more willing to pay for? I mean, what's the problem with some companies knowing what you like, if you're intending to pay for it anyway?
    - catacombs 8y ago
      Because the beer companies can trade the data with another company. And that company will trade the data to another company. And the cycle continues.
Jedi72 8y ago
Facebook does have utility for making new friends. Just last night I was out at a bar, chatting to some people, and at the end we added eachother on Facebook. We need some kind of service like Facebook, just one which is fully encrypted and where the data is in the users hands.
- yulaow 8y ago
  I just use directly telegram, the cool thing is I have not even to give them my real number
  - catacombs 8y ago
    What do you mean by real number? Do you mean your Telegram username?
  - newscracker 8y ago
    How did you create a Telegram account without your real number or a number you control? You can create a username and avoid giving out your phone number to other people, if that's what you're referring to. This is not available with WhatsApp or Signal. Telegram requires a phone number to create an account and to activate the account on additional devices. As an aside, Signal is also tied to a phone number. Wire is the only one that allows people to use email addresses to create accounts.
  - Jedi72 8y ago
    A messaging app isnt the same, you need the profiles aspect of it. I am not interested in having 10,000 contacts in my phone.
yulaow 8y ago
I honestly have not an account since an year but just for two reasons: - all of my contacts stopped using it well before, basically their whole profiles were empty of any news, photo or share. They just used it to read some news from some groups - I was still there because a group of my college was still active and I needed the contacts with some of those people. As soon as I didn't need them anymore I left SW-eu seems a totally empty space for facebook for what I could see. New generations are directly ignoring it, old generations are not even using it, and my generation has just stopped to find it useful at all
abathur 8y ago
I would like to request my data and delete, but severing the only mechanism I have for finding some people I know from previous academic programs is anxiety-inducing, so I avoid making a final decision. I've been bearish on it for a while now. I think I've been pondering deleting my account since around 2011 or 2012. I'm not sure when I last logged in. To a lesser degree, it's also probably the only way I'll find out if a few former professors/mentors die. I am slowly discounting the value of this one because I visit so infrequently that I already only find these out if my spouse notices, or someone I stay in regular contact texts/emails about it. I should probably look into configuring search/news alerts for this, or something.
ghostpirate 8y ago
Troll groups and meme groups
brosirmandude 8y ago
Honestly, public & private FB groups. Groups dedicated around specific subjects (mostly related to my career) have been some of the most influential places for learning, networking, building relationships that I've been able to call on later. FB groups are king because: 1. Everyone is already there. 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part). Other areas to learn/network and ask dumb/advanced questions exist, but to "community" vibe in FB groups is unrivaled. My FB feed is almost nothing but groups posts. I've hidden/unfriended most people I don't care about and no one I've kept really posts to their actual pages much these days anyway. I really wish Groups was a separate app. I'd keep that and messenger. I realize my privacy on fb, and likely around the whole web is the tradeoff for this but unfortunately that's what's required to stay on. The advancements I've made in my career and personal life directly & indirectly due to the FB groups I'm in are definitely worth it, and likely would not have happened without the existence of FB groups.
- ValentineC 8y ago
  > 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part). Why would you prefer this, versus anonymity-by-default on somewhere like Reddit?
  - babygoat 8y ago
    Networking and being anonymous don't go together very well.
    - newscracker 8y ago
      Counterpoint — this depends on the area of interest and the people. That networking and being "anonymous" don't go well is not necessarily true always, and need not be true always. One can have a handle/username/name without revealing one's real name to everyone on Facebook, and yet reveal one's real name through other means (out of band communication) to specific people at specific times for specific needs.
- AndrewOMartin 8y ago
  Absolutely agree about the importance of unfollowing all but the very highest signal/noise ratio friends, which includes very interesting posters, and certain family members for whom nothing should be missed! Add to that some aggressive ad blocking, element zapping, prioritisation of the notification window over the news feed, and use of the basic mobile site [http://mbasic.facebook.com/ http://mbasic.facebook.com/] and you've got an actually pleasant experience. Three great features of the basic site are i) predictable middle click behaviour of links, ii) no infinite scroll so you get a very clear indication of when you're about to do more than 'just glance at the top', iii) audio/video links are to raw media files .
rock_hard 8y ago
It would be great if you could clarify and be more specific about “what we know”...because so far I haven’t come across a single reason me and my friends should stop using Facebook. Broad generalizations and statements don’t help the conversation Sure, there is a lot of headlines with reasons...but I can’t remember a single one that wasn’t hugely out of context or debunked.
dpau 8y ago
Groups is the only reason I signed up for FB three years ago. These groups are very important for my open-source projects and professional life. FB is the only platform that offers a common place where these diverse communities exist. Formerly, mailing lists and discussion forums like phpBB filled this need, but unfortunately FB has become the internet for many non-tech people. I have tried my best to lure members of these groups to free spaces that I have set up using software like Discourse. (And briefly, Flarum.) I've put hundreds of hours into building content within Discourse and providing support, but to no avail. It's simply too convenient for people to use Facebook, instead. I'm really saddened by this development. The rich archives of mailing lists and forums from these communities from the 90's and 00's are still searchable online via a few old sites and archive.org. But all of our discussions and knowledge shared within FB seems to fall into a "black hole". Search functionality within groups is horrible. Not to mention that it's impossible to search if you're not logged into Facebook. FB is a horrible place to build and share knowledge. But I haven't found a way to convince people to go elsewhere, nor have I found software that's convincing enough an alternative.
- KajMagnus 8y ago
  > unfortunately FB has become the internet for many non-tech people I'm wondering if this is slightly changing? I'm in a non-profit and we have a FB group for us volunteers. However, messages posted there, are seen sometimes by only 10, sometimes by only 2, members. Out of maybe 40 in total. The FB group doesn't work, because FB doesn't show things posted there, in people's news feed. Instead, FB shows one's friends kittens, and vacation pics? And we're looking for other solutions. (see below) Agree about the benefits with forums. Closer to 100% certain delivery (instead of 5% or 50% in the Facebook group), and searchable discussion topics, categorizable, taggable, nice formatting and nice full screen editor, various types of topics (question-answers, or HackerNews open-ended, or Slack like chat), weekly summary emails and announcements ... if using sth. better than Facebook. > But all of our discussions and knowledge shared within FB seems to fall into a "black hole". Exactly > Search functionality within groups is horrible Yes Plus, Facebook is rather buggy I think. I start typing a chat message — Facebook doesn't save any draft, and the chat message text gets lost because of the-lost-update-bug which FB hasn't fixed. Plus, the chat message window is sometimes like 1x1 cm, on a 30'' screen. Crazy. Network lockin —> UX disaster :-/ > I haven't found a way to convince people to go elsewhere It'd be interesting to maybe talk a bit about good ways to do that? :- ) > nor have I found software that's convincing enough an alternative. I'd like us to try Talkyard (see my profile), which I'm developing, and it's like Flarum and Discourse (which you mentioned). However there's also built-in chat, and Question-Answers topics for quickly finding a solution, if one gets stuck e.g. at work, so one can find a solution and get back to work. ... Whilst FB instead does its best to distract everyone with ads and new things in the news feed.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
strken 8y ago
I have two groups of friends who mostly communicate via private Facebook groups, and because I decided to travel for a few years, I don't see either group enough to know what they're doing without Facebook. The social penalty for deleting my account would be the potential loss of a lot of my relationship with a large chunk of my friends. This also means that I don't use the feed, which is the primary source of Facebook's problems. I get an unfiltered list of posts my friends make, which is really all I ever wanted anyway.
- ghthor 8y ago
  I moved those groups to telegram and riot.im when I dropped my Facebook. I've found it nice to have a complete app dedicated to one group, nice to know exactly which type of notification I'm getting.
- hrbf 8y ago
  What I find interesting with this description is how anyone can be worried about losing “friends” when just changing the contact medium would result in losing them. There’s email, SMS, Signal, and yes: actual phones. Letters even. A friendship is not endangered by a switch of context, while casual acquaintances may be lost. Friends are people who are mainly interested in you, not ones who choose theirs ranking by convenience of communication method. Any social media has a broadcast mentality to it, like it would be too cumbersome to stay in touch otherwise. This is not a new occurrence. It has always been easier to “stay in touch” with the people immediately surrounding you. However, following that definition, the people who are your best friends would be the people you spend the most time with, which are probably you co-workers. Just imagine anyone taking the time to actually formulate a piece of personal writing, process thoughts before writing them down and in the end having to weigh what information to share or to write that letter at all, to have finite resources to write and to have to choose who is important and who is not. Instead of just flooding everyone with the same, probably curated and edited, information. Then again, I’m probably not the intended target group of Facebook and similar networks. People also smoke, drink, take drugs, have unprotected sex with strangers, risk their lives in stupid endeavors and generally do highly illogical things on a constant basis.
jrochkind1 8y ago
events. and addiction.
amha 8y ago
I have family and friends all across the US and across the world. I like them all, and I like hearing about their lives, even in the silly little details. Social networks are the easy way to do that, and Facebook is the network everyone seems to use. For people who are more misanthropic or introverted, or who don't value their connections as much (I mean that in a non-judgmental way), the utility of Facebook is probably a lot less. I think that's one of the big things I see on HN: a lot of people who hate Facebook partly because one of the main services it provides (maintaining long-distance social connections) isn't useful to them. (And of course I could call/email/text/etc. many of these people one-on-one, and of course I do that, too, but Facebook is a useful supplement for major life announcements from more distant friends/acquaintances, as well as trivial little details from closer friends.)
ta3216 8y ago
I think it’s important to take a more active stand. My child joined a school sport this fall and the coach told us information will be provided on a private Facebook group. I told him I don’t use Facebook and demanded he also put the information elsewhere, which he did end up doing. I hope over time, as more people demand this, more people will float away from FB.
ohazi 8y ago
Too many of the social event/party/gathering things that I go to use Facebook events as the primary means of letting everyone know about the details (when, where, last minute changes, door code, etc.).
newscracker 8y ago
I have a need to connect with people on a couple of specific topics that I believe are very important, and unfortunately, Facebook is where most people are. So I use (only) Facebook groups. All the forums and message boards of the past are not where many people are. I stay away from my timeline and the news feed. I believe that the timeline is a useless stream of junk with people always arguing and fighting one another. Recently I noticed that Facebook has prioritized video content, and now the news feed is an endless stream of useless videos that auto play. This is not the result of personalization, because I do not react to people's posts or comments (and give hints to Facebook). It's as if Facebook intends to create its own version of a future based on Idiocracy (the movie). [1] Facebook groups has some good features and has improved a lot for administrators over the last couple of years. But as dpau says in another comment here [2], search on Facebook and Facebook groups is terrible — it's worse than any bad web search engine one can think of. Most people end up posting the same posts and the same comments over and over again (this is not a Facebook-only issue, but the lack of good search makes enforcing "searching first as the norm" next to impossible). All the etiquette built around newsgroups and online forums over decades is nowhere to be seen on Facebook groups. Everybody seems to want to be spoonfed with answers, instantly. As dpau says [2], Facebook as a place to store useful information for posterity is a lost cause. If, either intentionally or unintentionally, Facebook were to delete all content older than a week from groups and timelines right now, nothing will be missed! Facebook _is the place_ where content goes to die! I tell people to put their content elsewhere on the web and share the link on Facebook, but many people are loathe to do it, not understanding that their effort, knowledge and time are wasted so pitifully by an incompetent and arrogant corporation that doesn't care much about anything on the human side (except showing more videos to show more video ads to make more money). I'm of the opinion that the sooner Facebook dies, the better off we'll be, even if there's no single alternative that fulfills all the features it offers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18481458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18481458
ageitgey 8y ago
Facebook is not only a sketchy company, but the FB product itself has also gotten continually worse. It's now a bloated mess absolutely plastered in ads and viral/scammy/politics-as-sports trash. Even the annoying autoplay "facebook trash" videos in the feed have interstitial ads now - i.e. ads inside of ads. The whole site has become a down-market cesspool that I have very little desire to use. That's ironic because I feel like FB got it's start because MySpace became a cesspool of trash and FB felt like the upscale alternative. But all that being said, I still have a FB account so I can check in on family members who don't (yet) use something else. But even among that unhip group of older people, they are quickly drifting away to instagram and I barely ever check in on Facebook anymore.
lordnacho 8y ago
It's an easy way to see what people are up to. Especially once you have kids it's not often you get to catch up with friends. And they aren't going to another service en masse. It's also a way to see some random content, much like my LinkedIn. Just a bunch of articles and memes. I do find that it's low quality, often very political on the articles side. But the memes and jokes are okay. It's gotten a lot less addictive over the years. Maybe I'll end up using it less and less naturally.
throwaway_vnkqd 8y ago
I deleted my account over a year ago, and I periodically consider rejoining for a few reasons: a) My social life has suffered considerably. I've heard that if your friendships are so shallow that they vanish when you're not on facebook they weren't worth much anyhow. That may be so, but at least when I was on facebook I would know when my "friends" (read: casual acquaintances that I met once) were throwing a party or going out somewhere that I could join. I'm single and I moved to my current city a few years ago and don't have old friendships. If I want any hope of meeting new people, making friends, dating, etc I need to be present enough to get opportunities. Leaving facebook cut off the most valuable tool I had to expand my social circle, and I now rarely go out or meet new people. I'm lonely, but I'm really uncomfortable creating a facebook account so I haven't done much about it. b) Meetup was a nice idea, but other than tech talks, nobody seems to use it where I am. If you like $hobby and want to find other local ${hobby}ists to share your activity with, you need to be on facebook. Do you like riding dirt bikes, but know that going to the desert with a bike without a buddy is dangerous...well, if you don't have facebook how are you going to find a buddy? You won't, instead you'll ride alone and hope you won't break a leg somewhere there isn't cell reception. b) Groups have replaced Craigslist. Where I live, not being on facebook costs money. Want to buy used furniture? Facebook. Interested in a cordless drill that costs $$$? Buy second-hand on facebook. Or just pay retail and buy new. Looking for an apartment? You can find a roommate on...wait for it...Facebook.
sky_projektor 8y ago
Not long ago I closed my Linkedin account because where I live, far eastern India, recruiters hardly use linkedin for anything & the rest did not find me employable either. I had been using Facebook in the hope of staying in touch with friends but of late I feel that my friends posting their lives not to connect, but to gather likes & comments. I shall close it too! Instagram, I use to follow interesting people, but is connected to my Facebook. I don't need that addiction too & hope to close all cyber social nuisance in near future!
paulcole 8y ago
Simple: I like looking at my friends’ posts and don’t value my privacy.
jnurmine 8y ago
I don't have an account now and never had an account either. Their purpose seemed somehow shady from the get-go. All that for free, what's the catch? What do they sell? And later the catch became obvious. For some people Facebook is certainly useful to keep in touch with folk. But for my part, I am happy I never joined. A corporation in a position to collect all kinds of information about you, to build graphs of who you know, when you communicate with them within the service, to learn even the people you know but who are not in the service yet appear in your pictures (shadow profiles), and so on... That is too much power for a single entity. Who watches and regulates them? Who looks after how that data is used? Who makes sure they behave? How can you ask them to go away if you don't like them? What if the political situation goes bad as in post-1920s bad and someone repeats the IBM/Hollerith tabulation machine use-case using data from Facebook? Some might say the tinfoil is strong in this one but come one, after everything with Snowden, after the Cambridge Analytica and everything else, I am happier and happier about my initial decision. The only way to win is to not play the game and all that.
teaneedz 8y ago
I haven't looked at the newsfeed or added new posts in over a couple of years. It's only used to access Pages, but I see activity stalling as quality declines. US growth is stalled and I hear nothing but negative sentiment against the Facebook brand from regular users. It's the equivalent of MySpace now, but will always have its diehard users—those who don't like change, or those who just don't get the anti-privacy and adtech poison it's built on. We should be asking why those who left Facebook still use Instagram which is feeding the same machine.
paglia_s 8y ago
As someone else said, Groups. Would I prefer them to be hosted somewhere else like a forum? Yes, Groups on Facebook are quite terrible to use with the non-chronological ordering, the comment system that encourages everythign but in depth comments, ... but the reality is that for a few subjects that I'm interested like development projects in the city where I live, .. they're the place where I can find the most up to date info and discussion
jarfil 8y ago
I use Facebook's login on some websites, its groups... and I like the ads. It may sound weird, but I adblock the hell out of ads everywhere when I'm doing something "serious", so the only ads I ever see are the ones in Facebook's app... and they're over 50% relevant and interesting to me. So I pretty much know that Facebook on mobile is a time waster, and I only use it to check out fun/cool stuff, which includes looking at curious things I'll never buy. Also, I have Facebook's notifications disabled, so I only use it on my terms.
lousken 8y ago
For chat, I haven't posted anything for 4 years but i still use it regularly to get in touch with people.
drivingmenuts 8y ago
I'm somewhat of an introvert and have frequent bouts of depression that keep me in the house for anything other than work. FB is how I follow up on my friends lives and maintain some contact with the outside world. I don't personally know anyone on any other forum.
tzs 8y ago
They require use of real names and are popular. That means that there is a decent chance people who encounter me offline might try to look me up there, because all they need is my name. If my name was something like Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, then I could go without having an account on such sites and people looking for me would find nothing. But my name is not Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. I have a very common last name, and a reasonably common first name. Such sites have many people with my name. People looking for me will find people with my name. By having an account at such sites, I can make sure I show up when people look for me, reducing the chance that they will mistake someone else for me which could lead to misunderstandings.
qbaqbaqba 8y ago
You could ask the same question about every company: Google and China censorship, killer drones, IBM role in the Holocaust, Ford's Nazi creator, majority of German corporations 'employing' slave labor, NASA importing Nazis, concentration camps sciencists. And I don't use it. I just find the recent outage hilarious.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

36 points by cityzen 8y ago

Ultimately explainable by the fact that extremely few, possibly zero people actually live their life according to principles. Everyone has their pet topic, everyone has their set of vices. I don't have a Facebook account, but I do own a (non-electric) car. I'm very much aware of how bad it is. Giving it up would restrict my life dramatically, so I don't. (I'd love a Model 3 when they finally hit the UK).

Domark 8y ago

Facebook is just another website. Sure it has problems, but it’s super handy for keeping up with a ‘distributed’ family across the globe. What are you fishing for?

cityzen 8y ago
I'm only fishing for understanding. I'm not judging you but it is honestly shocking to read Facebook's crisis framed as, "Sure it has problems but...". I appreciate your honest feedback.
dxhdr 8y ago
> Facebook is just another website. Strangely this website comes pre-installed on every phone I buy, and I can't uninstall it; the best I can do is deactivate. How do I get rid of this "website"?

simonsarris 8y ago

To share updates with my friends and family, buy used stuff on the marketplace, get info and be helpful to townspeople on town happenings from my town group (where I've also met some nice people that I now buy beef and eggs from), etc. Nothing in recent history has changed any of it's utility for me.

ineedasername 8y ago

I haven't bothered to delete it because I'm not very exposed to privacy issue there (I don't given them much of anything to sell) I don't actively post much of anything at all, but within my family it is considered a social norm. I'm expected to occasionally check in and give a like to some posted photos, and send the obligatory "Happy <something> | <congratulations>" here and there.

catacombs 8y ago
> I'm not very exposed to privacy issue there (I don't given them much of anything to sell) Facebook still likely has a lot of usage data about you. For example, they could make a profile of you based on the people you visit and interact with.

bufferoverflow 8y ago

Don't give them any information you don't want them to have. I only keep the account to log in into various services.

gaius 8y ago
Don't give them any information you don't want them to have. They buy data direct from airlines and credit cards now.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  So whether you use FB anymore or not, doesn't affect this.

psychometry 8y ago

Because for keeping in touch with people and being aware of events, there isn't a better alternative.

carlesfe 8y ago

I don't. But it isn't because I disagree with FB's politics. It's because all my friends (Europeans around 35 yo) just stopped using it. They all moved to Instagram. Facebook (the product) will be a desert by 3-5 years. However, Facebook Inc. had a lot of hindsight and bough Whatsapp and Instagram. I commute via train every day. 99% of the phone screens are either Insta or Whatsapp. Facebook Inc. wins. PS: I miss Facebook (the product). I hate Insta. I loathe the fact that it's all pics and no text. I have no good way to share ideas or jokes with my friends. But if I want to know what my friends are up to, that is the app I have to use.

nakedrobot2 8y ago
Excuse this old geezer, but.... how do you have discussions on instagram? how is instagram replacing groups and forums for people who share specific interests? this "we don't use facebook anymore, we use instagram" seems for a narrow usecase.
- AndrewDucker 8y ago
  Or events.
- reidjs 8y ago
  You can direct message and do group chats. To set up events you can just message a bunch of people time and place.

dzek69 8y ago

Because nothing on my account is actually private. I use fb mostly for groups (buy/sell groups, some technical knowledge sharing groups) and being up to date with band/companies news. I accept only people I really know and like, but I rarely invite anyone first. I don't "share my life" nor I look at other people posts about their lives (most of them haven't written a wall post in months anyway). I share "life stuff" with people in person and looks like most people are doing the same. Oh, and while a lot of people use Messenger I completely don't. Not at all.

dzek69 8y ago
To not lie about Messenger: I use it on webpage directly as a private contact initiation when buying/selling stuff. We exchange telephone numbers and that's usually all. And when somebody starts a random conversation (hadn't happen in a while) I just redirect them somewhere else. I also keep away from FB/Messenger apps and I avoid visiting FB on phone. On my pc I block trackers and stuff. I think all of above is sane way of using Facebook.

cheeze 8y ago

Beer. Im part of a bunch of private beer raffle groups. It goes like this 1. Someone buys a rare and sought after beer (say, at a release they waited hours in line for) 2. They come up with a valuation 3. They post the beer for N spots in one of these groups (almost always 10 spots, 0-9) 4. Folks buy spots by claiming number 5. Everyone pays up 6. Once full, the next Illinois fireball pick 3 "fireball number" (0-9) that gets drawn decides winner 7 winner gets shipped their beer These communities only exist on Facebook. And in that sense, fb works very well as a way to keep people honest (must use real accounts, must be vouched for to become a member) Yeah its a niche, but it's my niche.

catacombs 8y ago
Great. But, Facebook is surely collecting a shitton of data from you and the other beer group members and, possibly, selling it to data brokers, who, in turn, sell it to beer advertisement companies. You are the product.
- jarfil 8y ago
  But he gets beer, so what if some beer companies know that he likes beer and decide to pay someone to know what kind of beer he's more willing to pay for? I mean, what's the problem with some companies knowing what you like, if you're intending to pay for it anyway?
  - catacombs 8y ago
    Because the beer companies can trade the data with another company. And that company will trade the data to another company. And the cycle continues.

Jedi72 8y ago

Facebook does have utility for making new friends. Just last night I was out at a bar, chatting to some people, and at the end we added eachother on Facebook. We need some kind of service like Facebook, just one which is fully encrypted and where the data is in the users hands.

yulaow 8y ago
I just use directly telegram, the cool thing is I have not even to give them my real number
- catacombs 8y ago
  What do you mean by real number? Do you mean your Telegram username?
- newscracker 8y ago
  How did you create a Telegram account without your real number or a number you control? You can create a username and avoid giving out your phone number to other people, if that's what you're referring to. This is not available with WhatsApp or Signal. Telegram requires a phone number to create an account and to activate the account on additional devices. As an aside, Signal is also tied to a phone number. Wire is the only one that allows people to use email addresses to create accounts.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  A messaging app isnt the same, you need the profiles aspect of it. I am not interested in having 10,000 contacts in my phone.

yulaow 8y ago

I honestly have not an account since an year but just for two reasons: - all of my contacts stopped using it well before, basically their whole profiles were empty of any news, photo or share. They just used it to read some news from some groups - I was still there because a group of my college was still active and I needed the contacts with some of those people. As soon as I didn't need them anymore I left SW-eu seems a totally empty space for facebook for what I could see. New generations are directly ignoring it, old generations are not even using it, and my generation has just stopped to find it useful at all

abathur 8y ago

I would like to request my data and delete, but severing the only mechanism I have for finding some people I know from previous academic programs is anxiety-inducing, so I avoid making a final decision. I've been bearish on it for a while now. I think I've been pondering deleting my account since around 2011 or 2012. I'm not sure when I last logged in. To a lesser degree, it's also probably the only way I'll find out if a few former professors/mentors die. I am slowly discounting the value of this one because I visit so infrequently that I already only find these out if my spouse notices, or someone I stay in regular contact texts/emails about it. I should probably look into configuring search/news alerts for this, or something.

ghostpirate 8y ago

Troll groups and meme groups

brosirmandude 8y ago

Honestly, public & private FB groups. Groups dedicated around specific subjects (mostly related to my career) have been some of the most influential places for learning, networking, building relationships that I've been able to call on later. FB groups are king because: 1. Everyone is already there. 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part). Other areas to learn/network and ask dumb/advanced questions exist, but to "community" vibe in FB groups is unrivaled. My FB feed is almost nothing but groups posts. I've hidden/unfriended most people I don't care about and no one I've kept really posts to their actual pages much these days anyway. I really wish Groups was a separate app. I'd keep that and messenger. I realize my privacy on fb, and likely around the whole web is the tradeoff for this but unfortunately that's what's required to stay on. The advancements I've made in my career and personal life directly & indirectly due to the FB groups I'm in are definitely worth it, and likely would not have happened without the existence of FB groups.

ValentineC 8y ago
> 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part). Why would you prefer this, versus anonymity-by-default on somewhere like Reddit?
- babygoat 8y ago
  Networking and being anonymous don't go together very well.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    Counterpoint — this depends on the area of interest and the people. That networking and being "anonymous" don't go well is not necessarily true always, and need not be true always. One can have a handle/username/name without revealing one's real name to everyone on Facebook, and yet reveal one's real name through other means (out of band communication) to specific people at specific times for specific needs.
AndrewOMartin 8y ago
Absolutely agree about the importance of unfollowing all but the very highest signal/noise ratio friends, which includes very interesting posters, and certain family members for whom nothing should be missed! Add to that some aggressive ad blocking, element zapping, prioritisation of the notification window over the news feed, and use of the basic mobile site [http://mbasic.facebook.com/ http://mbasic.facebook.com/] and you've got an actually pleasant experience. Three great features of the basic site are i) predictable middle click behaviour of links, ii) no infinite scroll so you get a very clear indication of when you're about to do more than 'just glance at the top', iii) audio/video links are to raw media files .

rock_hard 8y ago

It would be great if you could clarify and be more specific about “what we know”...because so far I haven’t come across a single reason me and my friends should stop using Facebook. Broad generalizations and statements don’t help the conversation Sure, there is a lot of headlines with reasons...but I can’t remember a single one that wasn’t hugely out of context or debunked.

dpau 8y ago

Groups is the only reason I signed up for FB three years ago. These groups are very important for my open-source projects and professional life. FB is the only platform that offers a common place where these diverse communities exist. Formerly, mailing lists and discussion forums like phpBB filled this need, but unfortunately FB has become the internet for many non-tech people. I have tried my best to lure members of these groups to free spaces that I have set up using software like Discourse. (And briefly, Flarum.) I've put hundreds of hours into building content within Discourse and providing support, but to no avail. It's simply too convenient for people to use Facebook, instead. I'm really saddened by this development. The rich archives of mailing lists and forums from these communities from the 90's and 00's are still searchable online via a few old sites and archive.org. But all of our discussions and knowledge shared within FB seems to fall into a "black hole". Search functionality within groups is horrible. Not to mention that it's impossible to search if you're not logged into Facebook. FB is a horrible place to build and share knowledge. But I haven't found a way to convince people to go elsewhere, nor have I found software that's convincing enough an alternative.

KajMagnus 8y ago
> unfortunately FB has become the internet for many non-tech people I'm wondering if this is slightly changing? I'm in a non-profit and we have a FB group for us volunteers. However, messages posted there, are seen sometimes by only 10, sometimes by only 2, members. Out of maybe 40 in total. The FB group doesn't work, because FB doesn't show things posted there, in people's news feed. Instead, FB shows one's friends kittens, and vacation pics? And we're looking for other solutions. (see below) Agree about the benefits with forums. Closer to 100% certain delivery (instead of 5% or 50% in the Facebook group), and searchable discussion topics, categorizable, taggable, nice formatting and nice full screen editor, various types of topics (question-answers, or HackerNews open-ended, or Slack like chat), weekly summary emails and announcements ... if using sth. better than Facebook. > But all of our discussions and knowledge shared within FB seems to fall into a "black hole". Exactly > Search functionality within groups is horrible Yes Plus, Facebook is rather buggy I think. I start typing a chat message — Facebook doesn't save any draft, and the chat message text gets lost because of the-lost-update-bug which FB hasn't fixed. Plus, the chat message window is sometimes like 1x1 cm, on a 30'' screen. Crazy. Network lockin —> UX disaster :-/ > I haven't found a way to convince people to go elsewhere It'd be interesting to maybe talk a bit about good ways to do that? :- ) > nor have I found software that's convincing enough an alternative. I'd like us to try Talkyard (see my profile), which I'm developing, and it's like Flarum and Discourse (which you mentioned). However there's also built-in chat, and Question-Answers topics for quickly finding a solution, if one gets stuck e.g. at work, so one can find a solution and get back to work. ... Whilst FB instead does its best to distract everyone with ads and new things in the news feed.

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strken 8y ago

I have two groups of friends who mostly communicate via private Facebook groups, and because I decided to travel for a few years, I don't see either group enough to know what they're doing without Facebook. The social penalty for deleting my account would be the potential loss of a lot of my relationship with a large chunk of my friends. This also means that I don't use the feed, which is the primary source of Facebook's problems. I get an unfiltered list of posts my friends make, which is really all I ever wanted anyway.

ghthor 8y ago
I moved those groups to telegram and riot.im when I dropped my Facebook. I've found it nice to have a complete app dedicated to one group, nice to know exactly which type of notification I'm getting.
hrbf 8y ago
What I find interesting with this description is how anyone can be worried about losing “friends” when just changing the contact medium would result in losing them. There’s email, SMS, Signal, and yes: actual phones. Letters even. A friendship is not endangered by a switch of context, while casual acquaintances may be lost. Friends are people who are mainly interested in you, not ones who choose theirs ranking by convenience of communication method. Any social media has a broadcast mentality to it, like it would be too cumbersome to stay in touch otherwise. This is not a new occurrence. It has always been easier to “stay in touch” with the people immediately surrounding you. However, following that definition, the people who are your best friends would be the people you spend the most time with, which are probably you co-workers. Just imagine anyone taking the time to actually formulate a piece of personal writing, process thoughts before writing them down and in the end having to weigh what information to share or to write that letter at all, to have finite resources to write and to have to choose who is important and who is not. Instead of just flooding everyone with the same, probably curated and edited, information. Then again, I’m probably not the intended target group of Facebook and similar networks. People also smoke, drink, take drugs, have unprotected sex with strangers, risk their lives in stupid endeavors and generally do highly illogical things on a constant basis.

jrochkind1 8y ago

events. and addiction.

amha 8y ago

I have family and friends all across the US and across the world. I like them all, and I like hearing about their lives, even in the silly little details. Social networks are the easy way to do that, and Facebook is the network everyone seems to use. For people who are more misanthropic or introverted, or who don't value their connections as much (I mean that in a non-judgmental way), the utility of Facebook is probably a lot less. I think that's one of the big things I see on HN: a lot of people who hate Facebook partly because one of the main services it provides (maintaining long-distance social connections) isn't useful to them. (And of course I could call/email/text/etc. many of these people one-on-one, and of course I do that, too, but Facebook is a useful supplement for major life announcements from more distant friends/acquaintances, as well as trivial little details from closer friends.)

ta3216 8y ago

I think it’s important to take a more active stand. My child joined a school sport this fall and the coach told us information will be provided on a private Facebook group. I told him I don’t use Facebook and demanded he also put the information elsewhere, which he did end up doing. I hope over time, as more people demand this, more people will float away from FB.

ohazi 8y ago

Too many of the social event/party/gathering things that I go to use Facebook events as the primary means of letting everyone know about the details (when, where, last minute changes, door code, etc.).

newscracker 8y ago

I have a need to connect with people on a couple of specific topics that I believe are very important, and unfortunately, Facebook is where most people are. So I use (only) Facebook groups. All the forums and message boards of the past are not where many people are. I stay away from my timeline and the news feed. I believe that the timeline is a useless stream of junk with people always arguing and fighting one another. Recently I noticed that Facebook has prioritized video content, and now the news feed is an endless stream of useless videos that auto play. This is not the result of personalization, because I do not react to people's posts or comments (and give hints to Facebook). It's as if Facebook intends to create its own version of a future based on Idiocracy (the movie). [1] Facebook groups has some good features and has improved a lot for administrators over the last couple of years. But as dpau says in another comment here [2], search on Facebook and Facebook groups is terrible — it's worse than any bad web search engine one can think of. Most people end up posting the same posts and the same comments over and over again (this is not a Facebook-only issue, but the lack of good search makes enforcing "searching first as the norm" next to impossible). All the etiquette built around newsgroups and online forums over decades is nowhere to be seen on Facebook groups. Everybody seems to want to be spoonfed with answers, instantly. As dpau says [2], Facebook as a place to store useful information for posterity is a lost cause. If, either intentionally or unintentionally, Facebook were to delete all content older than a week from groups and timelines right now, nothing will be missed! Facebook _is the place_ where content goes to die! I tell people to put their content elsewhere on the web and share the link on Facebook, but many people are loathe to do it, not understanding that their effort, knowledge and time are wasted so pitifully by an incompetent and arrogant corporation that doesn't care much about anything on the human side (except showing more videos to show more video ads to make more money). I'm of the opinion that the sooner Facebook dies, the better off we'll be, even if there's no single alternative that fulfills all the features it offers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18481458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18481458

ageitgey 8y ago

Facebook is not only a sketchy company, but the FB product itself has also gotten continually worse. It's now a bloated mess absolutely plastered in ads and viral/scammy/politics-as-sports trash. Even the annoying autoplay "facebook trash" videos in the feed have interstitial ads now - i.e. ads inside of ads. The whole site has become a down-market cesspool that I have very little desire to use. That's ironic because I feel like FB got it's start because MySpace became a cesspool of trash and FB felt like the upscale alternative. But all that being said, I still have a FB account so I can check in on family members who don't (yet) use something else. But even among that unhip group of older people, they are quickly drifting away to instagram and I barely ever check in on Facebook anymore.

lordnacho 8y ago

It's an easy way to see what people are up to. Especially once you have kids it's not often you get to catch up with friends. And they aren't going to another service en masse. It's also a way to see some random content, much like my LinkedIn. Just a bunch of articles and memes. I do find that it's low quality, often very political on the articles side. But the memes and jokes are okay. It's gotten a lot less addictive over the years. Maybe I'll end up using it less and less naturally.

throwaway_vnkqd 8y ago

I deleted my account over a year ago, and I periodically consider rejoining for a few reasons: a) My social life has suffered considerably. I've heard that if your friendships are so shallow that they vanish when you're not on facebook they weren't worth much anyhow. That may be so, but at least when I was on facebook I would know when my "friends" (read: casual acquaintances that I met once) were throwing a party or going out somewhere that I could join. I'm single and I moved to my current city a few years ago and don't have old friendships. If I want any hope of meeting new people, making friends, dating, etc I need to be present enough to get opportunities. Leaving facebook cut off the most valuable tool I had to expand my social circle, and I now rarely go out or meet new people. I'm lonely, but I'm really uncomfortable creating a facebook account so I haven't done much about it. b) Meetup was a nice idea, but other than tech talks, nobody seems to use it where I am. If you like $hobby and want to find other local ${hobby}ists to share your activity with, you need to be on facebook. Do you like riding dirt bikes, but know that going to the desert with a bike without a buddy is dangerous...well, if you don't have facebook how are you going to find a buddy? You won't, instead you'll ride alone and hope you won't break a leg somewhere there isn't cell reception. b) Groups have replaced Craigslist. Where I live, not being on facebook costs money. Want to buy used furniture? Facebook. Interested in a cordless drill that costs $$$? Buy second-hand on facebook. Or just pay retail and buy new. Looking for an apartment? You can find a roommate on...wait for it...Facebook.

sky_projektor 8y ago

Not long ago I closed my Linkedin account because where I live, far eastern India, recruiters hardly use linkedin for anything & the rest did not find me employable either. I had been using Facebook in the hope of staying in touch with friends but of late I feel that my friends posting their lives not to connect, but to gather likes & comments. I shall close it too! Instagram, I use to follow interesting people, but is connected to my Facebook. I don't need that addiction too & hope to close all cyber social nuisance in near future!

paulcole 8y ago

Simple: I like looking at my friends’ posts and don’t value my privacy.

jnurmine 8y ago

I don't have an account now and never had an account either. Their purpose seemed somehow shady from the get-go. All that for free, what's the catch? What do they sell? And later the catch became obvious. For some people Facebook is certainly useful to keep in touch with folk. But for my part, I am happy I never joined. A corporation in a position to collect all kinds of information about you, to build graphs of who you know, when you communicate with them within the service, to learn even the people you know but who are not in the service yet appear in your pictures (shadow profiles), and so on... That is too much power for a single entity. Who watches and regulates them? Who looks after how that data is used? Who makes sure they behave? How can you ask them to go away if you don't like them? What if the political situation goes bad as in post-1920s bad and someone repeats the IBM/Hollerith tabulation machine use-case using data from Facebook? Some might say the tinfoil is strong in this one but come one, after everything with Snowden, after the Cambridge Analytica and everything else, I am happier and happier about my initial decision. The only way to win is to not play the game and all that.

teaneedz 8y ago

I haven't looked at the newsfeed or added new posts in over a couple of years. It's only used to access Pages, but I see activity stalling as quality declines. US growth is stalled and I hear nothing but negative sentiment against the Facebook brand from regular users. It's the equivalent of MySpace now, but will always have its diehard users—those who don't like change, or those who just don't get the anti-privacy and adtech poison it's built on. We should be asking why those who left Facebook still use Instagram which is feeding the same machine.

paglia_s 8y ago

As someone else said, Groups. Would I prefer them to be hosted somewhere else like a forum? Yes, Groups on Facebook are quite terrible to use with the non-chronological ordering, the comment system that encourages everythign but in depth comments, ... but the reality is that for a few subjects that I'm interested like development projects in the city where I live, .. they're the place where I can find the most up to date info and discussion

jarfil 8y ago

I use Facebook's login on some websites, its groups... and I like the ads. It may sound weird, but I adblock the hell out of ads everywhere when I'm doing something "serious", so the only ads I ever see are the ones in Facebook's app... and they're over 50% relevant and interesting to me. So I pretty much know that Facebook on mobile is a time waster, and I only use it to check out fun/cool stuff, which includes looking at curious things I'll never buy. Also, I have Facebook's notifications disabled, so I only use it on my terms.

lousken 8y ago

For chat, I haven't posted anything for 4 years but i still use it regularly to get in touch with people.

drivingmenuts 8y ago

I'm somewhat of an introvert and have frequent bouts of depression that keep me in the house for anything other than work. FB is how I follow up on my friends lives and maintain some contact with the outside world. I don't personally know anyone on any other forum.

tzs 8y ago

They require use of real names and are popular. That means that there is a decent chance people who encounter me offline might try to look me up there, because all they need is my name. If my name was something like Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, then I could go without having an account on such sites and people looking for me would find nothing. But my name is not Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. I have a very common last name, and a reasonably common first name. Such sites have many people with my name. People looking for me will find people with my name. By having an account at such sites, I can make sure I show up when people look for me, reducing the chance that they will mistake someone else for me which could lead to misunderstandings.

qbaqbaqba 8y ago

You could ask the same question about every company: Google and China censorship, killer drones, IBM role in the Holocaust, Ford's Nazi creator, majority of German corporations 'employing' slave labor, NASA importing Nazis, concentration camps sciencists. And I don't use it. I just find the recent outage hilarious.

deleted 8y ago

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