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The problem with being a Facebook-user is quitting it while trying to keep in touch with your friends. Presently, this only works if Facebook itself would fail.

The problem with being a Facebook-user is quitting it while trying to keep in touch with your friends. Presently, this only works if Facebook itself would fail. I believe if it were still possible to keep in touch with Facebook friends and content without being a Facebook-user yourself, we can subvert the Network Effect, which in the first place is what Facebook owes its dominance to. A solution may be to force social media companies by law to adhere to a standard on information exchange, much like e-mail and http protocols. If there is such a thing as "OpenBook" and it still allows me to communicate, comment, view and react to FB-content, I'd ditch FB in an instant.

beamatronic 6y ago
It sounds like your social graph should be portable, so you can take it to a neutral 3rd party.
- dirtydroog 6y ago
  Your phone has a phonebook.
- FabHK 6y ago
  That would be a dream. Switch providers, keep your phone number ^W^W username and social graph.
- gazzini 6y ago
  I’m interested in decoupling personal data from the application layer. Solid[0] is one such experiment. It seems doomed though... and even if it does “work”, I imagine the nightmare scenario where, in order to use FB, you have to give them FULL ACCESS to aaaaaaalll of your data (email, contacts, messages, etc...). There are also technical concerns around caching / rate-limiting, UX concerns around the complexity, and operational concerns around business models that don’t involve a Dragon’s cave full of data. But, I hope something like this works. Or maybe just better tools for personal blogs again? [0] https://solid.mit.edu https://solid.mit.edu
landryraccoon 6y ago
This is weird. I’m not on facebook and I keep in touch with my friends. Whats this weird jedi mind trick where Facebook has convinced people they can’t keep in touch off of it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deaddodo 6y ago
  I mean, the majority of people today keep in touch via IG, Messenger or WhatsApp. All of which are owned by Facebook. If you've avoided all of those as communication means; more power to you. But the Network Effect is real.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  It is easy to stay in touch with your core network without Facebook. Facebook just extends that ease of contact to everyone you've ever met.
- throwanem 6y ago
  It's sticky. People do forget. I've seen it happen too, when everyone I knew got on Facebook and I didn't. Over the course of a year or so, people just gradually stopped returning emails, texts, and calls. And Facebook event planning meant I never even found out about stuff until long after it happened, as for example with the two weddings I wasn't invited to because people used their Facebook friends lists as the only input to their invitation lists. They apologized when I ran into them after the fact, but they didn't change their behavior. I don't blame them, because Facebook is designed to modify human behavior in exactly this manner. You can be present on the platform to have revenue extracted from your social life, or you can be punished as a means of encouraging you to get on the platform so revenue can be extracted from your social life. Whether anyone intends this dichotomy is irrelevant. The purpose of a system is what it does. And this is what Facebook does.
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    I hate to tell you this but those people aren't your friends. I have plenty of friends. What's more, I know they're real. I mean, how real are your friendships if they won't respond to an occasional text? What even does friendship mean then?
gentleman11 6y ago
I’ve been off Facebook about a year and have spent far, far more time talking to and hanging out with friends than before. Even after Covid, we just switched to virtual hangouts, chat, and online games. Facebook does not help you keep in touch
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Problem is: how many of your friends now are up to date on what's happening to you? Probably just a handful vs maybe 20+ before. Also, more hanging out with friends probably means you tell the same story again and again, over and over.
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    Are you arguing that an in-person interaction is somehow actually less real and less meaningful than looking at someone's curated social media feed?
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      I am suggesting to consider that possibility, yes. I noticed the opposite is taken as truth without review.
      - landryraccoon 6y ago
        Well yes, it seems obvious to me that an in person interaction is more authentic. But I'm open to being proven wrong. Why would you argue that a social media feed would be more genuine?
        lostmsu 6y ago
        I am not sure what do you mean by "authentic". As for the genuine: people have more time to think what to say when making a post on social network, than in a real-time conversation.
  - 6y ago
glup 6y ago
> If there is such a thing as "OpenBook" and it still allows me to communicate, comment, view and react to FB-content, I'd ditch FB in an instant. Same here. I love the idea of federated social media, but it seems hard to get e.g., my parents to use it. Is there something that could be done to make it more accessible?
bronco21016 6y ago
This is the most non-sensical argument of all of the "I would but I can't" Facebook apologists. I've quit Facebook while many of my friends have not. I still trade memes, hear about going-ons in the neighborhood, get invited to parties, and generally have a functioning social life. I keep in touch via iMessage, Signal, Facetime, and GASP! SMS, the plain 'ol telephone, and e-mail. You do not NEED Facebook to have a functioning social life. It simply removes some of the friction of maintaining a social life in exchange for wildly valuable information about yourself and your friends. Meanwhile, it seems to be contributing to the destruction of Western society. So yea I suppose it seems like a fair trade just so you know about that weekend party milliseconds sooner.
warent 6y ago
I'm curious to know how much value it adds to our lives to stay in touch with long distance friends over facebook. Didn't we survive for years on old fashioned texts, phone calls, or even emails? If they are really that important, wouldn't we just be doing those things? This might be an unpopular opinion and sound cynical, but really consider that if we dont want to use those forms of communication over Facebook, maybe those friends are better left as happy memories?
mr_spothawk 6y ago
deleting your social network on their platform helps encourage them to fail.
Nextgrid 6y ago
We just need to fix the existing laws so they can't be used to stifle interoperability. As it stands there's nothing technically preventing anyone from reverse-engineering the Facebook client API and making a third-party client. There's going to be a game of cat and mouse (just like with ad blockers) but it is doable. The problem here is legal. Facebook recently (and wrongly) DMCA'd a GitHub repo of a PHP client for the Instagram API. That was blatant abuse of the DMCA regardless of everything else as all of the code was custom, not infringing on Facebook's copyright. However, even if the DMCA wasn't an issue there's always the risk of a lawsuit like with LinkedIn scraping (that thankfully seems to be going in the scraper's favor) or that App Stores are in bed with the big guys and will not allow a third-party client on the store to begin with.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Or if your friends are willing to interact with you by phone, text message (not Messages(tm)), email, in person, or whatever platform your group selects. It depends on your age, friend group, and location, but as a Midwesterner in his 30s, all of my friend groups - soccer, work, running, neighborhood, family, old classmates - have our primary group conversations over tools other than Facebook. I'm one of (not the only) person in those groups who doesn't use Facebook, but everyone has a phone, text messaging, and email, so we use those instead. I'd say ~80% of my friend group does have it, so I'm sure I miss out on some interesting photos and posts. But there's enough people that don't to make it unreasonable to exclude people who don't want it. Do you think your friends would stop talking to you if you said "Hey, I'm shutting down my Facebook, call me at ###-###-#### or email me at klingonopera@ if you want to get in touch"? They wouldn't. The network effect just isn't that strong, you wouldn't miss out on as much as you think you would, and I think my social life is better overall for the lack of Facebook.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  If someone is willing to forget you exist and stop communicating with you just because you dropped off their favorite social network system... well, my guess is they aren't really your friend after all.
divbzero 6y ago
Text, email, snail mail, phone, video chat, and (post-COVID) in-person gatherings are all other ways to stay in touch with family and friends. In many cases, the quality of interactions through these alternatives exceeds anything that “social” media can provide.
tvanantwerp 6y ago
I used the think I needed Facebook to keep in touch with friends. That is, until I pulled 3 months' worth of my data and categorized it. I realized I wasn't using it to keep in touch with friends at all, and was just mindlessly sharing low-engagement crap I found online. So I stopped using it, became happier, and I actually make an effort to keep in touch with friends through text, email, etc., now.
joelbluminator 6y ago
And who moderates OpenBook? What's gonna keep the new social networks feeding off Facebook from becoming another attention grabbing surveillance product?

beamatronic 6y ago

It sounds like your social graph should be portable, so you can take it to a neutral 3rd party.

dirtydroog 6y ago
Your phone has a phonebook.
FabHK 6y ago
That would be a dream. Switch providers, keep your phone number ^W^W username and social graph.
gazzini 6y ago
I’m interested in decoupling personal data from the application layer. Solid[0] is one such experiment. It seems doomed though... and even if it does “work”, I imagine the nightmare scenario where, in order to use FB, you have to give them FULL ACCESS to aaaaaaalll of your data (email, contacts, messages, etc...). There are also technical concerns around caching / rate-limiting, UX concerns around the complexity, and operational concerns around business models that don’t involve a Dragon’s cave full of data. But, I hope something like this works. Or maybe just better tools for personal blogs again? [0] https://solid.mit.edu https://solid.mit.edu

landryraccoon 6y ago

This is weird. I’m not on facebook and I keep in touch with my friends. Whats this weird jedi mind trick where Facebook has convinced people they can’t keep in touch off of it?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deaddodo 6y ago
I mean, the majority of people today keep in touch via IG, Messenger or WhatsApp. All of which are owned by Facebook. If you've avoided all of those as communication means; more power to you. But the Network Effect is real.
marcusverus 6y ago
It is easy to stay in touch with your core network without Facebook. Facebook just extends that ease of contact to everyone you've ever met.
throwanem 6y ago
It's sticky. People do forget. I've seen it happen too, when everyone I knew got on Facebook and I didn't. Over the course of a year or so, people just gradually stopped returning emails, texts, and calls. And Facebook event planning meant I never even found out about stuff until long after it happened, as for example with the two weddings I wasn't invited to because people used their Facebook friends lists as the only input to their invitation lists. They apologized when I ran into them after the fact, but they didn't change their behavior. I don't blame them, because Facebook is designed to modify human behavior in exactly this manner. You can be present on the platform to have revenue extracted from your social life, or you can be punished as a means of encouraging you to get on the platform so revenue can be extracted from your social life. Whether anyone intends this dichotomy is irrelevant. The purpose of a system is what it does. And this is what Facebook does.
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  I hate to tell you this but those people aren't your friends. I have plenty of friends. What's more, I know they're real. I mean, how real are your friendships if they won't respond to an occasional text? What even does friendship mean then?

gentleman11 6y ago

I’ve been off Facebook about a year and have spent far, far more time talking to and hanging out with friends than before. Even after Covid, we just switched to virtual hangouts, chat, and online games. Facebook does not help you keep in touch

lostmsu 6y ago
Problem is: how many of your friends now are up to date on what's happening to you? Probably just a handful vs maybe 20+ before. Also, more hanging out with friends probably means you tell the same story again and again, over and over.
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  Are you arguing that an in-person interaction is somehow actually less real and less meaningful than looking at someone's curated social media feed?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    I am suggesting to consider that possibility, yes. I noticed the opposite is taken as truth without review.
    - landryraccoon 6y ago
      Well yes, it seems obvious to me that an in person interaction is more authentic. But I'm open to being proven wrong. Why would you argue that a social media feed would be more genuine?
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        I am not sure what do you mean by "authentic". As for the genuine: people have more time to think what to say when making a post on social network, than in a real-time conversation.
- 6y ago

glup 6y ago

> If there is such a thing as "OpenBook" and it still allows me to communicate, comment, view and react to FB-content, I'd ditch FB in an instant. Same here. I love the idea of federated social media, but it seems hard to get e.g., my parents to use it. Is there something that could be done to make it more accessible?

bronco21016 6y ago

This is the most non-sensical argument of all of the "I would but I can't" Facebook apologists. I've quit Facebook while many of my friends have not. I still trade memes, hear about going-ons in the neighborhood, get invited to parties, and generally have a functioning social life. I keep in touch via iMessage, Signal, Facetime, and GASP! SMS, the plain 'ol telephone, and e-mail. You do not NEED Facebook to have a functioning social life. It simply removes some of the friction of maintaining a social life in exchange for wildly valuable information about yourself and your friends. Meanwhile, it seems to be contributing to the destruction of Western society. So yea I suppose it seems like a fair trade just so you know about that weekend party milliseconds sooner.

warent 6y ago

I'm curious to know how much value it adds to our lives to stay in touch with long distance friends over facebook. Didn't we survive for years on old fashioned texts, phone calls, or even emails? If they are really that important, wouldn't we just be doing those things? This might be an unpopular opinion and sound cynical, but really consider that if we dont want to use those forms of communication over Facebook, maybe those friends are better left as happy memories?

mr_spothawk 6y ago

deleting your social network on their platform helps encourage them to fail.

Nextgrid 6y ago

We just need to fix the existing laws so they can't be used to stifle interoperability. As it stands there's nothing technically preventing anyone from reverse-engineering the Facebook client API and making a third-party client. There's going to be a game of cat and mouse (just like with ad blockers) but it is doable. The problem here is legal. Facebook recently (and wrongly) DMCA'd a GitHub repo of a PHP client for the Instagram API. That was blatant abuse of the DMCA regardless of everything else as all of the code was custom, not infringing on Facebook's copyright. However, even if the DMCA wasn't an issue there's always the risk of a lawsuit like with LinkedIn scraping (that thankfully seems to be going in the scraper's favor) or that App Stores are in bed with the big guys and will not allow a third-party client on the store to begin with.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

Or if your friends are willing to interact with you by phone, text message (not Messages(tm)), email, in person, or whatever platform your group selects. It depends on your age, friend group, and location, but as a Midwesterner in his 30s, all of my friend groups - soccer, work, running, neighborhood, family, old classmates - have our primary group conversations over tools other than Facebook. I'm one of (not the only) person in those groups who doesn't use Facebook, but everyone has a phone, text messaging, and email, so we use those instead. I'd say ~80% of my friend group does have it, so I'm sure I miss out on some interesting photos and posts. But there's enough people that don't to make it unreasonable to exclude people who don't want it. Do you think your friends would stop talking to you if you said "Hey, I'm shutting down my Facebook, call me at ###-###-#### or email me at klingonopera@ if you want to get in touch"? They wouldn't. The network effect just isn't that strong, you wouldn't miss out on as much as you think you would, and I think my social life is better overall for the lack of Facebook.

ryandrake 6y ago
If someone is willing to forget you exist and stop communicating with you just because you dropped off their favorite social network system... well, my guess is they aren't really your friend after all.

divbzero 6y ago

Text, email, snail mail, phone, video chat, and (post-COVID) in-person gatherings are all other ways to stay in touch with family and friends. In many cases, the quality of interactions through these alternatives exceeds anything that “social” media can provide.

tvanantwerp 6y ago

I used the think I needed Facebook to keep in touch with friends. That is, until I pulled 3 months' worth of my data and categorized it. I realized I wasn't using it to keep in touch with friends at all, and was just mindlessly sharing low-engagement crap I found online. So I stopped using it, became happier, and I actually make an effort to keep in touch with friends through text, email, etc., now.

joelbluminator 6y ago

And who moderates OpenBook? What's gonna keep the new social networks feeding off Facebook from becoming another attention grabbing surveillance product?