10 ms·

Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience

by spodek 13y ago

Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. Experience has unequivocally shown me my life is better without them. I have a feeling the market forces forcing Google, Facebook, et al into an arms race after your privacy and personal life will motivate people to leave more and more in favor of small players that do one thing well. I expect people here will see the writing on the wall first that the sooner you get out the better. Yes, social networks have benefits, but they have costs too. Deleting Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc accounts improves your life. Deleting them earlier improves your life earlier.

pcurve 13y ago
Facebook was already doing a good job driving its own users away. All Google had to do was go under the Facebook tree, and pick up dropped users off the ground. It really didn't need to go climbing up the tree to pick them off the branches. As they're climbing the ladder, their own users are falling out of the baskets. Corny analogy aside, they're not even doing a good job integrating mail, youtube, google, google+. I can't count the number of times I meant to click "Settings" for youtube, and ended up going to either Google+ or Google setting.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  All we wanted from G+ was "Facebook, but not Facebook". That's it. That's all. They managed even to fuck that up.
  - a3n 13y ago
    Yeah, I remember two or three years ago there was a long bout of Facebook rage here, and I posted what I would like from Google as a replacement (under an earlier account). And G+ became almost exactly what I was wishing for, except they went out of their way to make it suck.
  - chetanahuja 13y ago
    This is google's own version of "the burning platform" (that is, the open web, in some of the more paranoid exec's vision). They are doing everything they can think of to fence off their own portion of the web before it's too late. Every product division has been (or had been) instructed to come up with a plan to integrate somehow with G+. This current youtube disaster is one of the results.
    - davidgerard 13y ago
      The amazing thing was they managed to blow thirteen years' good will in about two months. All gone. When techies are seriously considering using Bing for search ... you know your brand's gone toxic. If they'd just backed off in the nymwars, WE'D ALL BE OVER THERE NOW. Fucksakes.
      - mistermann 13y ago
        I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, with a lot of their ill deeds from the past forgotten or forgiven. If they decided that they are going to do it right, and not try to exploit users, they could become a threat again. I wonder if they are capable of this anymore though. Or, reddit, with their substantial userbase of young, technically advanced, and influential users - if they could figure out the scalability issues, they could launch a youtube competitor, for example, and LOTS of people would move there very quickly, even if it is not as good, because they are (so far) known to be pure, whereas google has now proven that is is not pure, and dishonest (do no evil). It's certainly not easy, but my point is, it's a lot easier when influential and vocal technical users have turned on you, and the degree to which they've turned.
        gcb1 13y ago
        reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content
acjohnson55 13y ago
I'm really psyched about Tent (https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/) as an alternative model. If people start to build apps around it, the promise is a system that puts storage and sharing into the hands of the user, not the provider.
- ta_delited 13y ago
  the second I read "build apps" I knew this is not even close to an alternative models. the only alternative model is decentralized, encrypted and pseudonymous/anonymous. Maybe something along the lines of btsync, btchat mixed with pursuit [1]. [1]: http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/ http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/
  - danielsiders 13y ago
    Tent is decentralized-- most Tent apps connect only to the user's own Tent server (they aren't hosted and don't "phone home"). Tent supports client-side encryption and strongly encourages anonymity.
  - acjohnson55 13y ago
    You just described Tent!
- kmfrk 13y ago
  And https://cupcake.is https://cupcake.is is a really dope free service people can use to kick the tires of it. EDIT: Here is an example: https://siracusa.cupcake.is/profile https://siracusa.cupcake.is/profile.
- naterator 13y ago
  Friggin' awesome. I have been thinking of a way to do social media but strictly under your own control, on your own server (until you decide to share something). It sounds like that's what these guys are doing. Still, people like stranger-to-stranger social media as well, like with Instagram. I suppose that functionality will always lie with a third party, since no privacy can be assumed in that case.
VLM 13y ago
"Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook" I would go on a tangent to this, that I never got any actionable information or other life improvement from facebook. I tried, really hard, for six months, to participate and get something out of it, but it was just a huge time waster so I wiped it. Although supposedly youtube is only (or mostly) used for trash talking comments on kitten videos, I have occasionally gotten actual useful data and experiences from youtube. Programming screencasts and the like. Also the videos I watch and comment on are of a professional-ish level I like being associated with. So I'm finding the outrage hard to generate. If the whole world finds out my real name liked a university video lecture about simulating a vibrating 2-D plane using multiple stack computers solving differential eqs instantiated on a FPGA as a lab exercise at Columbia, well, I'm not going to ragequit youtube over it. In fact I think thats just great. Its their property; if they want to drastically change its culture (to something I happen to prefer) its hard for me to feel bad about it. There was a cheesy falling apart barn nearby the Interstate not too far from where I live. The new owners painted it; outrage from traditionalists who would rather see it torn down than painted. What do I care, other than I happen to like the new paint job? If the complainers don't like it, they can put up their own antique barn and let it decay unpainted, or they could have bought the old barn. The original author didn't like that the rabbit bathing video site decided to dump him, so shout out, you can't dump me because I'm dumping you first. Well all this high school dating drama is amusing for me to watch, but I have a FPGA video to get back to watching. And if someone finds out, that's OK with me. Unlike facebook, youtube can demand a fair trade because its content is actually worth something. OK here's my real name, now let me watch something useful. This might be the end of youtube as we know it, as a complete waste of time, I mean. It doesn't mean the end of the site.
- gcb1 13y ago
  but you have option. like that fancy pants academic video? nice. thumbed up a silly cat video just to show someone later on your phone? too bad. its there now too.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.
Shinkei 13y ago
I am late to this party, so I doubt my comment will be seen but... I think you are oversimplifying the pros/cons of social media. Facebook and LinkedIn are incredibly useful as networking tools if nothing else. I can maintain a network of people in many different cities and countries and keep up on family/friend developments without talking on the phone for hours. Plus it makes sharing things like articles, photos, and videos much easier. The list goes on and on... As for privacy? Well, celebrities live with the absence of privacy as a requisite of becoming famous. We enjoy a free service with the implicit agreement that we are giving something of ourselves in exchange--our eyeballs and personal data for ads. It's up to you to make that choice, but you can't whine when you enjoyed a free service for so long.
- chronic25 13y ago
  Yes we can whine. We whine and will move to a different product.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  Celebrities also generally receive large amounts of money and other perks for their loss of privacy. Facebook can film me 16 hours a day if they hook me up with a couple mil.
- daliusd 13y ago
  E-mail and blogs can do that as well.
ta_delited 13y ago
Experience led me to not get a gmail when the service opened, actually I stayed away of anything google (except the search engine while it provided relevant results) since it switched from being a search engine to an ads seller based on profiling of people. Then being hired to uncover people's identity from their online activity in times before so called "social networks" were coined led me to never register on friendster, myspace or any other followers of this trend. I failed to see the benefits of linkedin which still spams on a regular basis (if anyone knows how to stop receiving emails from linkedin...) and saw where facebook was headed in their attempt to be the new msn which for those who remember was microsoft attempt to destroy the internet by replacing it with a microsoft owned network which came bundled with windows 95. I value freedom, therefore privacy, I refuse to be the product being sold and hate with a passion anything ads-based for I have experienced the web before ads which is the vector from which privacy invasion and surveillance came to be. For some reason people started to offer money to display ads banner on websites but asked for at least a way to count and track clicks on those banners and It's been all downhill from there. For those who read TAZ by Hakim Bey he put the end of the potential of the web to put the people in power around 1996 when ads came to the web and turned it into a surveillance tool.
g0lden 13y ago
I found that unsubscribing from friends feeds and only following certain publications that are in tune with my personal interests has allowed me to stay with Facebook longer. More recently however I have been moving towards twitter / hn for my news intake and conversation, and Facebook has remained in my routine only as a 'bad habit'
jfoster 13y ago
I think you're underestimating the lengths people will go to in order to use the company whose products they are already somewhat familiar with. Google+ has certainly made a big mess of Google's accounts and settings systems, but I'll just stumble my way through all of that occasionally to avoid potentially getting burnt by some smaller company that I don't know as much about.

by spodek 13y ago

pcurve 13y ago

Facebook was already doing a good job driving its own users away. All Google had to do was go under the Facebook tree, and pick up dropped users off the ground. It really didn't need to go climbing up the tree to pick them off the branches. As they're climbing the ladder, their own users are falling out of the baskets. Corny analogy aside, they're not even doing a good job integrating mail, youtube, google, google+. I can't count the number of times I meant to click "Settings" for youtube, and ended up going to either Google+ or Google setting.

davidgerard 13y ago
All we wanted from G+ was "Facebook, but not Facebook". That's it. That's all. They managed even to fuck that up.
- a3n 13y ago
  Yeah, I remember two or three years ago there was a long bout of Facebook rage here, and I posted what I would like from Google as a replacement (under an earlier account). And G+ became almost exactly what I was wishing for, except they went out of their way to make it suck.
- chetanahuja 13y ago
  This is google's own version of "the burning platform" (that is, the open web, in some of the more paranoid exec's vision). They are doing everything they can think of to fence off their own portion of the web before it's too late. Every product division has been (or had been) instructed to come up with a plan to integrate somehow with G+. This current youtube disaster is one of the results.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    The amazing thing was they managed to blow thirteen years' good will in about two months. All gone. When techies are seriously considering using Bing for search ... you know your brand's gone toxic. If they'd just backed off in the nymwars, WE'D ALL BE OVER THERE NOW. Fucksakes.
    - mistermann 13y ago
      I agree with this. Whether it matters if this good will is gone I don't know, but it might - I know my opinion of google has gone from extremely high to really low, and it is partially so low because of their importance, I believe they have a responsibility to act properly. I truly believe they are opening a gap that others could exploit. Microsoft, so late to this party, with their userbase and technical know-how, with a lot of their ill deeds from the past forgotten or forgiven. If they decided that they are going to do it right, and not try to exploit users, they could become a threat again. I wonder if they are capable of this anymore though. Or, reddit, with their substantial userbase of young, technically advanced, and influential users - if they could figure out the scalability issues, they could launch a youtube competitor, for example, and LOTS of people would move there very quickly, even if it is not as good, because they are (so far) known to be pure, whereas google has now proven that is is not pure, and dishonest (do no evil). It's certainly not easy, but my point is, it's a lot easier when influential and vocal technical users have turned on you, and the degree to which they've turned.
      - gcb1 13y ago
        reddit is an echo chamber even worse than here. i dread depending on its platform for any content

acjohnson55 13y ago

I'm really psyched about Tent (https://tent.io/ https://tent.io/) as an alternative model. If people start to build apps around it, the promise is a system that puts storage and sharing into the hands of the user, not the provider.

ta_delited 13y ago
the second I read "build apps" I knew this is not even close to an alternative models. the only alternative model is decentralized, encrypted and pseudonymous/anonymous. Maybe something along the lines of btsync, btchat mixed with pursuit [1]. [1]: http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/ http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/
- danielsiders 13y ago
  Tent is decentralized-- most Tent apps connect only to the user's own Tent server (they aren't hosted and don't "phone home"). Tent supports client-side encryption and strongly encourages anonymity.
- acjohnson55 13y ago
  You just described Tent!
kmfrk 13y ago
And https://cupcake.is https://cupcake.is is a really dope free service people can use to kick the tires of it. EDIT: Here is an example: https://siracusa.cupcake.is/profile https://siracusa.cupcake.is/profile.
naterator 13y ago
Friggin' awesome. I have been thinking of a way to do social media but strictly under your own control, on your own server (until you decide to share something). It sounds like that's what these guys are doing. Still, people like stranger-to-stranger social media as well, like with Instagram. I suppose that functionality will always lie with a third party, since no privacy can be assumed in that case.

VLM 13y ago

"Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook" I would go on a tangent to this, that I never got any actionable information or other life improvement from facebook. I tried, really hard, for six months, to participate and get something out of it, but it was just a huge time waster so I wiped it. Although supposedly youtube is only (or mostly) used for trash talking comments on kitten videos, I have occasionally gotten actual useful data and experiences from youtube. Programming screencasts and the like. Also the videos I watch and comment on are of a professional-ish level I like being associated with. So I'm finding the outrage hard to generate. If the whole world finds out my real name liked a university video lecture about simulating a vibrating 2-D plane using multiple stack computers solving differential eqs instantiated on a FPGA as a lab exercise at Columbia, well, I'm not going to ragequit youtube over it. In fact I think thats just great. Its their property; if they want to drastically change its culture (to something I happen to prefer) its hard for me to feel bad about it. There was a cheesy falling apart barn nearby the Interstate not too far from where I live. The new owners painted it; outrage from traditionalists who would rather see it torn down than painted. What do I care, other than I happen to like the new paint job? If the complainers don't like it, they can put up their own antique barn and let it decay unpainted, or they could have bought the old barn. The original author didn't like that the rabbit bathing video site decided to dump him, so shout out, you can't dump me because I'm dumping you first. Well all this high school dating drama is amusing for me to watch, but I have a FPGA video to get back to watching. And if someone finds out, that's OK with me. Unlike facebook, youtube can demand a fair trade because its content is actually worth something. OK here's my real name, now let me watch something useful. This might be the end of youtube as we know it, as a complete waste of time, I mean. It doesn't mean the end of the site.

gcb1 13y ago
but you have option. like that fancy pants academic video? nice. thumbed up a silly cat video just to show someone later on your phone? too bad. its there now too.
- philwelch 13y ago
  It's very hard for me to imagine someone who wants to try so very hard to maintain a serious public image that they won't be caught liking a silly cat video on YouTube. That seems hilariously self-important.

Shinkei 13y ago

I am late to this party, so I doubt my comment will be seen but... I think you are oversimplifying the pros/cons of social media. Facebook and LinkedIn are incredibly useful as networking tools if nothing else. I can maintain a network of people in many different cities and countries and keep up on family/friend developments without talking on the phone for hours. Plus it makes sharing things like articles, photos, and videos much easier. The list goes on and on... As for privacy? Well, celebrities live with the absence of privacy as a requisite of becoming famous. We enjoy a free service with the implicit agreement that we are giving something of ourselves in exchange--our eyeballs and personal data for ads. It's up to you to make that choice, but you can't whine when you enjoyed a free service for so long.

chronic25 13y ago
Yes we can whine. We whine and will move to a different product.
wavefunction 13y ago
Celebrities also generally receive large amounts of money and other perks for their loss of privacy. Facebook can film me 16 hours a day if they hook me up with a couple mil.
daliusd 13y ago
E-mail and blogs can do that as well.

ta_delited 13y ago

Experience led me to not get a gmail when the service opened, actually I stayed away of anything google (except the search engine while it provided relevant results) since it switched from being a search engine to an ads seller based on profiling of people. Then being hired to uncover people's identity from their online activity in times before so called "social networks" were coined led me to never register on friendster, myspace or any other followers of this trend. I failed to see the benefits of linkedin which still spams on a regular basis (if anyone knows how to stop receiving emails from linkedin...) and saw where facebook was headed in their attempt to be the new msn which for those who remember was microsoft attempt to destroy the internet by replacing it with a microsoft owned network which came bundled with windows 95. I value freedom, therefore privacy, I refuse to be the product being sold and hate with a passion anything ads-based for I have experienced the web before ads which is the vector from which privacy invasion and surveillance came to be. For some reason people started to offer money to display ads banner on websites but asked for at least a way to count and track clicks on those banners and It's been all downhill from there. For those who read TAZ by Hakim Bey he put the end of the potential of the web to put the people in power around 1996 when ads came to the web and turned it into a surveillance tool.

g0lden 13y ago

I found that unsubscribing from friends feeds and only following certain publications that are in tune with my personal interests has allowed me to stay with Facebook longer. More recently however I have been moving towards twitter / hn for my news intake and conversation, and Facebook has remained in my routine only as a 'bad habit'

jfoster 13y ago

I think you're underestimating the lengths people will go to in order to use the company whose products they are already somewhat familiar with. Google+ has certainly made a big mess of Google's accounts and settings systems, but I'll just stumble my way through all of that occasionally to avoid potentially getting burnt by some smaller company that I don't know as much about.