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What, exactly, do you expect in terms of hard evidence from someone who is claiming they find Facebook useful? Do you expect to get a spreadsheet of their usage

by gfodor 13y ago

What, exactly, do you expect in terms of hard evidence from someone who is claiming they find Facebook useful? Do you expect to get a spreadsheet of their usage activity and a split test they ran where they defriended half of their closest friends and tried using e-mail for a week? The only people who can share "hard evidence" of engagement data of the Facebook news feed are Facebook themselves, and they are not going to do that. When it comes to understanding user satisfaction, anecdotes count a lot, particularly when those anecdotes re-enforce the thesis of a product by example. You raise the question of what is the point of Facebook if you hide 90% of your "friends". Just asking this question shows that you don't really get what the author is saying. Putting quotes around "friends" tells me you are missing the point that the author is, in fact, leaving left un-hid people who meet two attributes: are legitimate close friends/relatives and post interesting and meaningful content. What remains is a one-of-a-kind stream of content that provides him/her with the ability to feel they are in tune with the lives of people who they are no longer nearby. People who come to HN and rail on Facebook about privacy concerns and ethics have a point. People who come on HN and rail on Facebook The Product are missing the point. If Facebook's news feed is not engaging, it means one of two things: you have over-friended and not hidden people who post bad content, or you are not connected to any people who post content on Facebook that you enjoy. There are many, many people that do not fit in either of these categories.

dvt 13y ago
I think you missed my point. I expect hard evidence (or even anecdotal evidence!) when making the following claim: "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby." A) I think that care deeply needs to be defined. B) My opinion is that FB is too superficial to merit any kind of "deep connection." Here is where some evidence would have been nice. B.1) Even so, considering that (just about) everything on FB is semi-public, I'm not sure how anything posted on FB would be conducive to a personal and deep relationship with anyone. Unless we're only talking about private messages sent via FB messenger or something (but FB as a whole is a different kind of animal). I wasn't railing on FB the Product, as you call it. But I think that the new generation is looking for something more substantive. (There have been slews of such articles [providing hard evidence, incidentally] lately.) I think I'd also be looking for something more substantive (even though I'm 27). My point is that it doesn't seem possible to maintain a personal and deep connection with just about anyone through FB (given the semi-private nature of the service); saying otherwise is begging the question: how, exactly, do you maintain this relationship merely though the superficiality of FB?
- shuzchen 13y ago
  First of all, everything on FB is as public as the poster decides to make it. If you put in a tiny amount of effort, you can separate your friends into groups and have your posts by default only visible by a selected group of friends. (Funny thing is that when Google came out with circles for G+, the people who raved about it never realized the same feature was available at FB for ages. Granted, the circle metaphor and UI made the feature easier to use in G+, but the functionality was always there at FB). Really, the only privacy issue with FB is controlling what other people post about you (i.e., your friend takes a picture of you and posts it to their friends). Secondly, I don't think anyone has claimed that they maintain a deep relationship using FB only. Like I mention in a nearby reply, having the constant superficial connection through FB strengthens the actual time spent together.
- gfodor 13y ago
  I don't see how this line of argument can be productive at all. Basically what you are saying is this person should go into detail about the specifics of individual interactions with their friends and family on Facebook, and use that as some type of "evidence" that those relationships are "deep." The result of this, of course, will be skeptics conjuring up their own litmus tests for what constitutes a "deep" relationship in a way that the author's examples fall outside of that definition. Or, they will reframe the author's examples in other media or means and explain how those interactions would somehow be more meaningful than if they were happening on Facebook. This objectification of human relationships will, of course, be incredibly shallow and offensive to many people. When you are dealing with people's personal lives and how they value relationships, it's pretty hard to come up with some objective measure of value beyond the self-evaluation of the people in the relationships themselves. Since otherwise, you are by definition being judgmental.
  - dvt 13y ago
    So then, are claims like "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby." completely frivolous? I don't think so. I'm not asking for the lurid details of a romantic relationship here, just some anecdotes that prove exactly how Facebook (as opposed to the myriad of other communication software: IM, email, Skype, etc.) helped foster a "deep relationship." Someone argued that the OP and I have different definitions of deep. This could very well be the case. I consider deep relationships to be ones that I have with my family, best friends, romantic interest, and maybe some extended family or family friends here and there. If Facebook would disappear tomorrow, my relationship with the aforementioned groups of people wouldn't suffer one bit. But I could, as always, be mistaken.
shuzchen 13y ago
I agree with this and the OP - but in my case Facebook has brought me closer to the friends I see every weekend. I mean, not only in the group messaging and event planning in preparation for our weekly gatherings, but it also improves our time spent together. We no longer need to talk about shallow details (restaurants we've tried, things that happened at work, what the weather is like on that side of town) but more quickly get into deeper conversations (or, you know, the drinks and board games). It's also worth noting that hiding has improved dramatically since it was first introduced. Now, you have more control over what gets hidden. For example, you can remove a "friend" from your feed but still get notified when they have a major update or life event (e.g. get married, move away). That way, you can get rid of the noise that person creates but not throw out the signal at the same time.

by gfodor 13y ago

dvt 13y ago

I think you missed my point. I expect hard evidence (or even anecdotal evidence!) when making the following claim: "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby." A) I think that care deeply needs to be defined. B) My opinion is that FB is too superficial to merit any kind of "deep connection." Here is where some evidence would have been nice. B.1) Even so, considering that (just about) everything on FB is semi-public, I'm not sure how anything posted on FB would be conducive to a personal and deep relationship with anyone. Unless we're only talking about private messages sent via FB messenger or something (but FB as a whole is a different kind of animal). I wasn't railing on FB the Product, as you call it. But I think that the new generation is looking for something more substantive. (There have been slews of such articles [providing hard evidence, incidentally] lately.) I think I'd also be looking for something more substantive (even though I'm 27). My point is that it doesn't seem possible to maintain a personal and deep connection with just about anyone through FB (given the semi-private nature of the service); saying otherwise is begging the question: how, exactly, do you maintain this relationship merely though the superficiality of FB?

shuzchen 13y ago
First of all, everything on FB is as public as the poster decides to make it. If you put in a tiny amount of effort, you can separate your friends into groups and have your posts by default only visible by a selected group of friends. (Funny thing is that when Google came out with circles for G+, the people who raved about it never realized the same feature was available at FB for ages. Granted, the circle metaphor and UI made the feature easier to use in G+, but the functionality was always there at FB). Really, the only privacy issue with FB is controlling what other people post about you (i.e., your friend takes a picture of you and posts it to their friends). Secondly, I don't think anyone has claimed that they maintain a deep relationship using FB only. Like I mention in a nearby reply, having the constant superficial connection through FB strengthens the actual time spent together.
gfodor 13y ago
I don't see how this line of argument can be productive at all. Basically what you are saying is this person should go into detail about the specifics of individual interactions with their friends and family on Facebook, and use that as some type of "evidence" that those relationships are "deep." The result of this, of course, will be skeptics conjuring up their own litmus tests for what constitutes a "deep" relationship in a way that the author's examples fall outside of that definition. Or, they will reframe the author's examples in other media or means and explain how those interactions would somehow be more meaningful than if they were happening on Facebook. This objectification of human relationships will, of course, be incredibly shallow and offensive to many people. When you are dealing with people's personal lives and how they value relationships, it's pretty hard to come up with some objective measure of value beyond the self-evaluation of the people in the relationships themselves. Since otherwise, you are by definition being judgmental.
- dvt 13y ago
  So then, are claims like "Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby." completely frivolous? I don't think so. I'm not asking for the lurid details of a romantic relationship here, just some anecdotes that prove exactly how Facebook (as opposed to the myriad of other communication software: IM, email, Skype, etc.) helped foster a "deep relationship." Someone argued that the OP and I have different definitions of deep. This could very well be the case. I consider deep relationships to be ones that I have with my family, best friends, romantic interest, and maybe some extended family or family friends here and there. If Facebook would disappear tomorrow, my relationship with the aforementioned groups of people wouldn't suffer one bit. But I could, as always, be mistaken.

shuzchen 13y ago

I agree with this and the OP - but in my case Facebook has brought me closer to the friends I see every weekend. I mean, not only in the group messaging and event planning in preparation for our weekly gatherings, but it also improves our time spent together. We no longer need to talk about shallow details (restaurants we've tried, things that happened at work, what the weather is like on that side of town) but more quickly get into deeper conversations (or, you know, the drinks and board games). It's also worth noting that hiding has improved dramatically since it was first introduced. Now, you have more control over what gets hidden. For example, you can remove a "friend" from your feed but still get notified when they have a major update or life event (e.g. get married, move away). That way, you can get rid of the noise that person creates but not throw out the signal at the same time.