5 ms·

What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in

by nugget 8y ago

What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in touch with family and friends in your network? I agree with you that there's real value there, but for me it became overshadowed by the deluge of unwanted features and content.

webmobdev 8y ago
The old fashioned way - remember their birthdays and anniversaries, call and talk to them regularly (once a month or two is fine), meet them if they come to town or you visit their city, make an effort to be with them during important events (death, birth, marriage, new job etc.) as much as possible. It doesn't matter if they are too busy sometimes - just do this diligently.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
  Except that even before FB no one remembered birthdays and anniversaries of more than maybe their 10-20 immediate contacts/relations. The rest were diligently written down in a diary.
  - webmobdev 8y ago
    So use a diary or a digital diary with a reminder (aka most calendar apps). The point is to keep in touch at regular intervals, and talking or meeting is more meaningful than a message or a post.
o10449366 8y ago
Personally, I don't use FB anymore even though I still have an account. I use Messenger to keep up with my closest friends and I use Instagram for photo sharing and general life updates. I don't follow anyone who I don't actually consider a friend and my profile is on private. I further restrict my circle with Instagram's "Close Friends" feature when I want to share something on my story with only a select few. Prior to that, though, I just made extensive use of Facebook's unfollow feature and a few key uBlock Origin filters (that block out any posts containing the words "____ was tagged in a post" or such). Also, for what it's worth, I only follow ~200 people on Instagram so maybe I don't have enough feed content to generate any, but I have NEVER seen an advertisement on Instagram and all of the posts also appear in chronological order for me. I get the feeling that most of the people who have a bad time with FB or Instagram are the people who don't use the unfollow feature for their uncle that spends all day posting inflammatory political rants or who follow spammy Instagram accounts that are just promotion bots. If you use FB and FB's apps and services to keep up with your friends, your real friends, I think they're pretty great. Edit: For those interested, these are my uBlock filters for facebook.com: https://pastebin.com/GHwpM9bY https://pastebin.com/GHwpM9bY If you're tired of the noise in your feed I recommend trying these out. They aren't particularly well organized, when I first started using uBlock Origin I wasn't all too familiar with the syntax, but they do a pretty good job (for me).
- rconti 8y ago
  I'm not sure what "[having] enough feed content to generate [ads]" on Instagram even means. I suspect you must browse on desktop with some filtering? I think I follow fewer than 200 people, and 0 brands/"influencers"/"celebrities" ... and i get PLENTY of ads. maybe every 5th post. Using the app, that is.
  - o10449366 8y ago
    No, 99% of my time spent on Instagram is on my phone. I have never seen an advertisement on there or on the desktop site. My hypothesis is that they have some threshold that "every N posts we insert M ads" and because my feed doesn't meet that N-post threshold I've never seen any ads. That's only a guess, though.
    - saberience 8y ago
      That doesn't make any sense. Instagram shows ads no matter who you are or how many friends/posts you have. I use Insta less than anyone I know. I only have 179 friends on there and barely get any posts showing up but I still see ads. I just checked the feed now and the second "post" was an ad for "Quickbooks". So you're either deliberately lying or can't tell the difference between an ad or a real post.
      - o10449366 8y ago
        It seems unlikely you'd be convinced even if I sent a censored video of my feed, but anecdotally it seems I'm not the only one: https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free-instagram-account-and-its-bliss https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free...
- tenebrisalietum 8y ago
  I notice a lot of junk from Facebook comes from "re-shares"; people sharing stuff from these crappy third-party groups that exist simply to make things viral. I tend to block on sight, but wish there was a way to say "Automatically block shared posts containing videos/photos that don't originate from the poster or people in my Friends." I'm sure there are people that save these meme/viral pictures on their phone and re-post it, rather than just blindly share from these stupid groups, but not very many from what I've seen.
savanaly 8y ago
>What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in touch with family and friends in your network? That we all think of those as Facebook's "core utility" says a lot. I once spoke with a Facebook engineer and learned their primary development area was supporting how certain business owners in certain developing countries use Facebook: as their primary means of being paid for their services. In some places it's common to order delivery via Messenger, then as proof that payment is on the way take a picture of the money transfer receipt and share that picture via Messenger too. That this use of Facebook had never crossed my mind served as a big reminder to me that as an a) first-worlder and b) affluent techie I probably can't fathom 90% of the use that the rest of the world gets out of services that seem to me to be worthless.
TuringNYC 8y ago
>> What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) The best replacement is tons of time, mental-energy, and the regimen of actually keeping in touch. Before Facebook, this honestly never happened for me. This is why I'm disappointed Facebook is where it is -- because they provided a service that made keeping in touch automatic and I think they have messed it up, possibly permanently. There are a core of ~10 family members I stay in touch with always, regardless of tools. Same for about ~10 friends. Beyond that, life got in the way. Facebook made it easy to up those numbers to ~30, and ~200. There are people I like, enjoy interacting with, but just aren't so important that i'd be able to schedule a bi-monthly call to catch up with them, or email them, etc. In programmer speak, Facebook is like subscribing to a bunch of topics on a message bus. Could you poll and do message exchange?...yes, you could...but it is too hard and that is why you use async and subscriptions.

by nugget 8y ago

webmobdev 8y ago

The old fashioned way - remember their birthdays and anniversaries, call and talk to them regularly (once a month or two is fine), meet them if they come to town or you visit their city, make an effort to be with them during important events (death, birth, marriage, new job etc.) as much as possible. It doesn't matter if they are too busy sometimes - just do this diligently.

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
Except that even before FB no one remembered birthdays and anniversaries of more than maybe their 10-20 immediate contacts/relations. The rest were diligently written down in a diary.
- webmobdev 8y ago
  So use a diary or a digital diary with a reminder (aka most calendar apps). The point is to keep in touch at regular intervals, and talking or meeting is more meaningful than a message or a post.

o10449366 8y ago

Personally, I don't use FB anymore even though I still have an account. I use Messenger to keep up with my closest friends and I use Instagram for photo sharing and general life updates. I don't follow anyone who I don't actually consider a friend and my profile is on private. I further restrict my circle with Instagram's "Close Friends" feature when I want to share something on my story with only a select few. Prior to that, though, I just made extensive use of Facebook's unfollow feature and a few key uBlock Origin filters (that block out any posts containing the words "____ was tagged in a post" or such). Also, for what it's worth, I only follow ~200 people on Instagram so maybe I don't have enough feed content to generate any, but I have NEVER seen an advertisement on Instagram and all of the posts also appear in chronological order for me. I get the feeling that most of the people who have a bad time with FB or Instagram are the people who don't use the unfollow feature for their uncle that spends all day posting inflammatory political rants or who follow spammy Instagram accounts that are just promotion bots. If you use FB and FB's apps and services to keep up with your friends, your real friends, I think they're pretty great. Edit: For those interested, these are my uBlock filters for facebook.com: https://pastebin.com/GHwpM9bY https://pastebin.com/GHwpM9bY If you're tired of the noise in your feed I recommend trying these out. They aren't particularly well organized, when I first started using uBlock Origin I wasn't all too familiar with the syntax, but they do a pretty good job (for me).

rconti 8y ago
I'm not sure what "[having] enough feed content to generate [ads]" on Instagram even means. I suspect you must browse on desktop with some filtering? I think I follow fewer than 200 people, and 0 brands/"influencers"/"celebrities" ... and i get PLENTY of ads. maybe every 5th post. Using the app, that is.
- o10449366 8y ago
  No, 99% of my time spent on Instagram is on my phone. I have never seen an advertisement on there or on the desktop site. My hypothesis is that they have some threshold that "every N posts we insert M ads" and because my feed doesn't meet that N-post threshold I've never seen any ads. That's only a guess, though.
  - saberience 8y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. Instagram shows ads no matter who you are or how many friends/posts you have. I use Insta less than anyone I know. I only have 179 friends on there and barely get any posts showing up but I still see ads. I just checked the feed now and the second "post" was an ad for "Quickbooks". So you're either deliberately lying or can't tell the difference between an ad or a real post.
    - o10449366 8y ago
      It seems unlikely you'd be convinced even if I sent a censored video of my feed, but anecdotally it seems I'm not the only one: https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free-instagram-account-and-its-bliss https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free...
tenebrisalietum 8y ago
I notice a lot of junk from Facebook comes from "re-shares"; people sharing stuff from these crappy third-party groups that exist simply to make things viral. I tend to block on sight, but wish there was a way to say "Automatically block shared posts containing videos/photos that don't originate from the poster or people in my Friends." I'm sure there are people that save these meme/viral pictures on their phone and re-post it, rather than just blindly share from these stupid groups, but not very many from what I've seen.

savanaly 8y ago

>What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) for Facebook's core utility of sharing photos and updates, and generally staying in touch with family and friends in your network? That we all think of those as Facebook's "core utility" says a lot. I once spoke with a Facebook engineer and learned their primary development area was supporting how certain business owners in certain developing countries use Facebook: as their primary means of being paid for their services. In some places it's common to order delivery via Messenger, then as proof that payment is on the way take a picture of the money transfer receipt and share that picture via Messenger too. That this use of Facebook had never crossed my mind served as a big reminder to me that as an a) first-worlder and b) affluent techie I probably can't fathom 90% of the use that the rest of the world gets out of services that seem to me to be worthless.

TuringNYC 8y ago

>> What are the best replacements (products, services, or just best practices) The best replacement is tons of time, mental-energy, and the regimen of actually keeping in touch. Before Facebook, this honestly never happened for me. This is why I'm disappointed Facebook is where it is -- because they provided a service that made keeping in touch automatic and I think they have messed it up, possibly permanently. There are a core of ~10 family members I stay in touch with always, regardless of tools. Same for about ~10 friends. Beyond that, life got in the way. Facebook made it easy to up those numbers to ~30, and ~200. There are people I like, enjoy interacting with, but just aren't so important that i'd be able to schedule a bi-monthly call to catch up with them, or email them, etc. In programmer speak, Facebook is like subscribing to a bunch of topics on a message bus. Could you poll and do message exchange?...yes, you could...but it is too hard and that is why you use async and subscriptions.