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This is completely anecdotal and personally subjective and is only tangentially related to the topic, but today it dawned on me that Facebook now has an eerily

This is completely anecdotal and personally subjective and is only tangentially related to the topic, but today it dawned on me that Facebook now has an eerily 'myspace'-esque cesspool feel for me. I login less and less frequently and when I do I'm just overwhelmed by the amount of inane spammy "like this post so this poor child can get surgery" bullshit. I realize I have control over this stuff, but the amount of it is so overwhelming at this point that I can't be bothered to try to keep on top of it anymore. It feels like email pre-good-spam-filtering.

untog 15y ago
I've never seen a "like this post" entry in my news feed- perhaps because I only have 180 friends (a list I've never really needed to trim, but have been mindful of). I log into Facebook less as well, but because it's so ubiquitous that actually going to www.facebook.com and logging in feels like a rarity.
k-mcgrady 15y ago
That sounds like a problem with your friends, not Facebook. I have never seen one of those posts on Facebook. I see them all the time on Twitter as they are retweeted a lot. I have around 150 friends on Facebook, all of whom I now well 'in real life' and 90% of the content I see is interesting and relevant.
- awakeasleep 15y ago
  You might be oversimplifying, because the same thing could have been said about MySpace. You said it may be a problem with the friends you chose, which is correct, but when a social net grows too large, real life social pressures start inducing you to include people who aren't interesting, and that has an overall negative effect on the network. So the choice end up being between manually filtering spam and snubbing people who you have to interact with on a daily basis.
  - k-mcgrady 15y ago
    That's a good point. I've kept my friend list down by actively not accepting all friend requests and it still astonishes me the reaction some people have when I 'reject' them. Particularly people I've only met once or twice. It also depends on the type of people you friend. For example very active internet users (especially geeks) are more likely to post links to tech stories, use the subscriber system etc. Most people I know keep everything private, don't share links (apart from the odd YouTube video), and only share interesting things about their lives.
ArtB 15y ago
I agree. I think the reason people move onto newer sites is to escape the cesspool... but that cesspool is the one the advertisers want. So if the hipsters all ditch facebook and go to another service they will raise its profile and will attract members of the cesspool to follow to this new hotness...

untog 15y ago

I've never seen a "like this post" entry in my news feed- perhaps because I only have 180 friends (a list I've never really needed to trim, but have been mindful of). I log into Facebook less as well, but because it's so ubiquitous that actually going to www.facebook.com and logging in feels like a rarity.

k-mcgrady 15y ago

That sounds like a problem with your friends, not Facebook. I have never seen one of those posts on Facebook. I see them all the time on Twitter as they are retweeted a lot. I have around 150 friends on Facebook, all of whom I now well 'in real life' and 90% of the content I see is interesting and relevant.

awakeasleep 15y ago
You might be oversimplifying, because the same thing could have been said about MySpace. You said it may be a problem with the friends you chose, which is correct, but when a social net grows too large, real life social pressures start inducing you to include people who aren't interesting, and that has an overall negative effect on the network. So the choice end up being between manually filtering spam and snubbing people who you have to interact with on a daily basis.
- k-mcgrady 15y ago
  That's a good point. I've kept my friend list down by actively not accepting all friend requests and it still astonishes me the reaction some people have when I 'reject' them. Particularly people I've only met once or twice. It also depends on the type of people you friend. For example very active internet users (especially geeks) are more likely to post links to tech stories, use the subscriber system etc. Most people I know keep everything private, don't share links (apart from the odd YouTube video), and only share interesting things about their lives.

ArtB 15y ago

I agree. I think the reason people move onto newer sites is to escape the cesspool... but that cesspool is the one the advertisers want. So if the hipsters all ditch facebook and go to another service they will raise its profile and will attract members of the cesspool to follow to this new hotness...