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I disagree with the general statement and basically every sub point. - Indiscriminate Sharing I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to sha

I disagree with the general statement and basically every sub point. - Indiscriminate Sharing I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to. I don't want to be pressured to create circles of friends for different things. If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see then it's a mistake to post it. It's better for the default to be public than some sort of pseudo private. If it's that you only want to share specific interests with specific people I never thought that that was a problem people actually had to begin with. - Facebook gets worse the more you use it This is just anecdotal, but facebook's news feed has always been impressively on point to who I'm interacting with more in real life. It also seems to send heartbeat posts from friends I haven't seen in a while occasionally (or more often when I check in on their page manually). People who are consistently bad I just unfollow which solves that. - Loudmouths now have gigantic megaphones. Unfollow them. - Social Media Scamsters This is pretty minor and only effects the case when friends are liking things that are completely uninteresting or liking many things so that it's spamming you (something I haven't really noticed because I think the newsfeed filters it). In general facebook is a solid chat platform and way to share interesting content/pictures with your network. The main complaint I can come up with for facebook is that skype sucks and their video chat could be much better.

beatpanda 13y ago
This: If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see than it's a mistake to post it. is a privileged perspective. I'm guessing a lot of HNers aren't subject to gang injunctions, but imagine for a moment that you are. Suddenly, "pictures of me and my friends hanging out" become dangerous, something that can land you in jail. Or let's say you identify as queer to your close friends and immediate family, but you have more distant relatives who you're not ready to tell just yet, but don't want to 'unfriend' on Facebook. Or let's say you're a member of a religious group that's persecuted in the country you live in, but you'd still like to be a part of Facebook groups full of people for whom it's not an issue. The fact that you're able to be the same person in public at all times is a privilege that not everyone has. For everyone else, you're saying that constant self-censorship should be "good enough". I find that perspective abhorrent.
- pyre 13y ago
  I think the general opinion of the parent poster is that if you are posting something that you wish to be private, then you shouldn't. The idea being that Facebook now has access to it, as do their advertisers (possibly). That information can now be released publicly intentionally or unintentionally. For example, the act of posting it, even to a subset of friends, is a risk. There's the possibility of a Facebook bug that sends that information public instead.
  - fossuser 13y ago
    Yeah that's what I was trying to suggest, and even if there is no bug people can share it outside of your protected group pretty easily.
    - pyre 13y ago
      This is less of an issue though. Presumably if your 'inner circle' knows that you are gay, then sharing LBGT links on Facebook isn't going to increase the likelihood that they will spill the beans to someone by a large margin.
  - beatpanda 13y ago
    ...which should be an indictment of Facebook's misunderstanding of how social identity works in the real world, not of its users.
  - beatpanda 13y ago
    It's also important to point out that Facebook is decidedly not neutral on this issue. They take information that used to be private and make it public all the time, because they think it should be, and every new product feature is built from that perspective. That is a bug.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      It's a bug for us, a feature for them :-/
piokoch 13y ago
"I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to." The point is that it is not about poster comfort, but others comfort - you think that you post something interesting and worth sharing but that might not be an impression of your friends, who might like 20% of your posts, maybe on a given subject, and they don't want to unfollow you. Your friends are your friends, so there is not reason to unfollow someone, I would prefere to be able to unfollow from certain types of posts (jokes, funny cat picures, stuff funny for hackers, whatever). The article advocates that there should be an easy way to say "that's not interesting for me" without unfollowing given person. I think FB misses something like Dislike button, that would tell FB that I am not interested in a given subject.
jwdunne 13y ago
"- Indiscriminate sharing..." I like this point. Personally, I find that there's too much friction between choosing which friend belongs where and then further choosing the appropriate group when sharing content. I might just be lazy but it just doesn't work for me. I also think there's a certain value in being well behaved when sharing content if you have people on there that you wouldn't want them to see, for example colleagues, managers and, more importantly, children. For example, I look after a 2.5 year old boy and I do not use curse words in his vicinity nor do I look at pictures of boobs when he can see. It's just not proper. However, I'm free to do those things when he is in bed and out of the way (with regards to boobs, I don't but me and my fiance will behave like adults). Based on this, rather than a whole bunch of categories for your friends, why not set up certain filters? This could be quite simple: Do not allow friends under the age of x to see my content at all after HH:MM and before HH:MM. These can also be set on a per-friend basis so if you have a couple of colleagues as friends that haven't set their workplace, you can set something like this up for them too. A way to only share to certain people is great but FB has this and it's adequate: groups. I founded a number of programming groups and I will share stuff relating to that to them rather than my news feed since it's more suited to them AND there are many people in there I'm not friends with. It's a great way to get good, categorised discussion and the added bonus of meeting new people. As I said, I don't think it's very valuable, not in terms of technology but in terms of society, for people to be able to share unlimited amounts of content at all times which you wouldn't share to the whole public. "- Facebook gets worse the more you use it..." The disagreement with this is good too: it's the way you to use it. I use FB slightly differently but, as said above, setting up my programming groups and inspiring others to do the same has created a great community within Facebook and I can honestly say I've had some very decent conversations as a result of this, even with people I don't know or never met. This isn't what FB sells itself as but it can be done quite easily and I see value in that.
lsc 13y ago
>I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to. I don't want to be pressured to create circles of friends for different things. And this is why I'm not on facebook Sure, I'm cool with family baby photos, and "oh, my kid did X, y or Z, I'm so proud" you know, that's what I expect out of a family list. that's all well and good. But if I have to wade through a gazillion "likes" and a bunch of half-baked emotionally-charged political rants to get at those things? Nope. I'm logging off. Seriously, do you know how many messages I get a day that I actually have to deal with? It's a large number. It's not at all unusual for me to send 30 emails before I take my morning shower. That's the thing about email. We've worked out an etiquette. Nobody is going to email me a link to a funny cat video; or email me an emotionally charged political rant. that's rude, and I'll tell family that is rude if they start doing that to me. In fact, that's the thing I like about facebook the most; it is such a great platform for emotionally charged political rants and cute cat pictures that my family has moved all that stuff to facebook and off of email. I mean, I'm missing all the baby pictures now, but that's a price I can pay.

beatpanda 13y ago

This: If the idea is that there is some content you don't want a subset of people to see than it's a mistake to post it. is a privileged perspective. I'm guessing a lot of HNers aren't subject to gang injunctions, but imagine for a moment that you are. Suddenly, "pictures of me and my friends hanging out" become dangerous, something that can land you in jail. Or let's say you identify as queer to your close friends and immediate family, but you have more distant relatives who you're not ready to tell just yet, but don't want to 'unfriend' on Facebook. Or let's say you're a member of a religious group that's persecuted in the country you live in, but you'd still like to be a part of Facebook groups full of people for whom it's not an issue. The fact that you're able to be the same person in public at all times is a privilege that not everyone has. For everyone else, you're saying that constant self-censorship should be "good enough". I find that perspective abhorrent.

pyre 13y ago
I think the general opinion of the parent poster is that if you are posting something that you wish to be private, then you shouldn't. The idea being that Facebook now has access to it, as do their advertisers (possibly). That information can now be released publicly intentionally or unintentionally. For example, the act of posting it, even to a subset of friends, is a risk. There's the possibility of a Facebook bug that sends that information public instead.
- fossuser 13y ago
  Yeah that's what I was trying to suggest, and even if there is no bug people can share it outside of your protected group pretty easily.
  - pyre 13y ago
    This is less of an issue though. Presumably if your 'inner circle' knows that you are gay, then sharing LBGT links on Facebook isn't going to increase the likelihood that they will spill the beans to someone by a large margin.
- beatpanda 13y ago
  ...which should be an indictment of Facebook's misunderstanding of how social identity works in the real world, not of its users.
- beatpanda 13y ago
  It's also important to point out that Facebook is decidedly not neutral on this issue. They take information that used to be private and make it public all the time, because they think it should be, and every new product feature is built from that perspective. That is a bug.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    It's a bug for us, a feature for them :-/

piokoch 13y ago

"I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to." The point is that it is not about poster comfort, but others comfort - you think that you post something interesting and worth sharing but that might not be an impression of your friends, who might like 20% of your posts, maybe on a given subject, and they don't want to unfollow you. Your friends are your friends, so there is not reason to unfollow someone, I would prefere to be able to unfollow from certain types of posts (jokes, funny cat picures, stuff funny for hackers, whatever). The article advocates that there should be an easy way to say "that's not interesting for me" without unfollowing given person. I think FB misses something like Dislike button, that would tell FB that I am not interested in a given subject.

jwdunne 13y ago

"- Indiscriminate sharing..." I like this point. Personally, I find that there's too much friction between choosing which friend belongs where and then further choosing the appropriate group when sharing content. I might just be lazy but it just doesn't work for me. I also think there's a certain value in being well behaved when sharing content if you have people on there that you wouldn't want them to see, for example colleagues, managers and, more importantly, children. For example, I look after a 2.5 year old boy and I do not use curse words in his vicinity nor do I look at pictures of boobs when he can see. It's just not proper. However, I'm free to do those things when he is in bed and out of the way (with regards to boobs, I don't but me and my fiance will behave like adults). Based on this, rather than a whole bunch of categories for your friends, why not set up certain filters? This could be quite simple: Do not allow friends under the age of x to see my content at all after HH:MM and before HH:MM. These can also be set on a per-friend basis so if you have a couple of colleagues as friends that haven't set their workplace, you can set something like this up for them too. A way to only share to certain people is great but FB has this and it's adequate: groups. I founded a number of programming groups and I will share stuff relating to that to them rather than my news feed since it's more suited to them AND there are many people in there I'm not friends with. It's a great way to get good, categorised discussion and the added bonus of meeting new people. As I said, I don't think it's very valuable, not in terms of technology but in terms of society, for people to be able to share unlimited amounts of content at all times which you wouldn't share to the whole public. "- Facebook gets worse the more you use it..." The disagreement with this is good too: it's the way you to use it. I use FB slightly differently but, as said above, setting up my programming groups and inspiring others to do the same has created a great community within Facebook and I can honestly say I've had some very decent conversations as a result of this, even with people I don't know or never met. This isn't what FB sells itself as but it can be done quite easily and I see value in that.

lsc 13y ago

>I don't want to have to make a decision every time I want to share a link to something interesting about what subset of friends I'm sharing it to. I don't want to be pressured to create circles of friends for different things. And this is why I'm not on facebook Sure, I'm cool with family baby photos, and "oh, my kid did X, y or Z, I'm so proud" you know, that's what I expect out of a family list. that's all well and good. But if I have to wade through a gazillion "likes" and a bunch of half-baked emotionally-charged political rants to get at those things? Nope. I'm logging off. Seriously, do you know how many messages I get a day that I actually have to deal with? It's a large number. It's not at all unusual for me to send 30 emails before I take my morning shower. That's the thing about email. We've worked out an etiquette. Nobody is going to email me a link to a funny cat video; or email me an emotionally charged political rant. that's rude, and I'll tell family that is rude if they start doing that to me. In fact, that's the thing I like about facebook the most; it is such a great platform for emotionally charged political rants and cute cat pictures that my family has moved all that stuff to facebook and off of email. I mean, I'm missing all the baby pictures now, but that's a price I can pay.