4 ms·

Doctorow: How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

48 points by ivankirigin 19y ago

brlewis 19y ago
This is the best anti-social-networking article I've read yet. Choice quote: You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.
- Dauntless 19y ago
  I admit I have a lot of pending friends' requests... I was hoping they were going to expire but it looks like Facebook haven't implemented this very useful feature.
  - smelendez 19y ago
    Just click the decline/ignore/whatever button. It doesn't tell them.
- zaidf 19y ago
  May be you should just not friend them? It's as easy as friending them.
  - coffeeaddicted 19y ago
    It's only as easy when you look at it from the technical side (two buttons - click one). From a more social point of view there's a big difference (how big depends certainly on each person).
- rkts 19y ago
  Simple solution: change your privacy settings.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
damien 19y ago
I've never understood how Facebook got to be so big in the first place with their policy of requiring to sign up to do anything. I've never needed to see a Facebook page that badly that I'd want to spend the time signing up for yet another website that I never use. (And why is Facebook banned from BugMeNot?) Facebook is the new AOL... hadn't thought of it that way, but it does seem like an appropriate analogy.
- mrtron 19y ago
  Facebook the new AOL? Absolutely the best analogy.
  - damien 19y ago
    Has anyone written a Facebook App that gives Usenet access?
    - run4yourlives 19y ago
      I'm going to write one that sends you free cd's with "software" on them.
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  Easy. Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge. After a few months in 2004 it got to the point that not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were (because they couldn't read your profile like they could everyone elses). Obviously it influenced none of your close friends, but people you just met would judge you by your profile and decide whether or not to include you in the future. It was also a great way to find your friend's hot friends and set up a meeting somehow. The fact you had to give them your college email address and a password was no barrier. Heck, not having to choose a user name or design your profile yourself made it easier to sign up. (I can answer this since I was in college at the time it got started.)
  - brlewis 19y ago
alaskamiller 19y ago
This Facebook backlash trend is interesting.
- jotto 19y ago
  i think the trend is only with the tech-crowd, we'll see if this spreads to non-techy people, but i think the myspace crowd enjoys where facebook is at right now - self expression, maximum friend count etc... you can get value out of facebook, just add the friends who are truly in your inner-circle, or those that were and moved away. you can also prevent yourself from being searched for, so when someone else says i can't find you on facebook, you can say a) oh, i'm not on facebook, or b) oh i have the privacy settings on, i'll send an invite to you
  - nickb 19y ago
    Hmm... Facebook is full of techie crowd. All those college people are quite competent when it comes to using the Web. All you need is one: "X purchased [porn dvd] from Y" in your feed and all your 'friends' are gonna laugh at you and ridicule you and it will leave you with sour feeling in your mouth. Or they'll criticize your tastes and judge you by the crap you buy. Exodus from FB has already begun.
    - sspencer 19y ago
      Pfft. Anyone who would ridicule me for buying porn is right to do so. Porn is freely available on the internet. Seriously, though: I could care less about what shows up on the feeds. Anyone who would criticize or judge me for what I buy isn't among my friends, in real life or on facebook. Worried about your boss (as Doctorow says, you pretty much have to friend this one if they come a-courtin') seeing too much? Just twiddle the privacy settings so he or she only sees the most innocuous of updates. While there are many valid criticisms of facebook, I have never worried once about the ones you listed. Just my 2 cents.
andreyf 19y ago
It's funny how quickly moods vary between "facebook is unstoppable" to "facebook is in a nosedive for disaster"... They seem to be good at listening to users and fixing mistakes, but they don't seem to have much foresight in their strategies - Integrating my Amazon purchases onto my feed? Kind of neat, but I already do that with anything I want to share via a bookshare application...
raghus 19y ago
By 10am this morning, a friend of mine had already taken two movie quizzes and a trivia challenge - as faithfully reported by Flixster's PublishActionOfUser. I wonder what happens if her co-worker and FB friend, who might not like her too much shows her FB profile to their boss. It's one thing to let people waste time on your site - it's quite another to tell everyone exactly what they did and when they did it.
sabat 19y ago
Corey Doctorow is a tool. OK, that's argumentum ad hominem, so let's look at why he's being a tool this particular here time. Bullshit argument. If you don't want to hear from the guy who beat you up, don't add him -- or better yet, write back and say "you beat me up, and you're lucky I don't track you down and let the air out of your tires every day for a week." Social networks are not for pussies. They're for people who are ready to face society and its weirdos. Perhaps Corey Doctorow isn't just a tool, but also a pussy.
- nostrademons 19y ago
  Having been on lots of social networks (DeadJournal, LiveJournal, Friendster, uJournal, Plogs, MySpace, and Facebook, in that order), Doctorow's basically right-on when it comes to what real people do. I've had friends tell me, several times, "We're all on (GreatestJournal|MySpace|Facebook) now; come join us." Mass migrations between social networks are not as rare as people who are on their first social network tend to think. Maybe ordinary people are pussies too.
  - sabat 19y ago
    "Mass migrations between social networks are not as rare as people who are on their first social network tend to think." Is that what Corey is complaining about? I read that he hates being stalked. I think he likes complaining about hating being stalked. Regardless, the fear of social networking because the "wrong" people might find you -- that's what makes Corey a pussy. What difference does it make if your friends move to new social nets? No one is forcing you to do anything. Politely tell them you're giving up social networking. In any event: much ado about nothing.
johnarama 19y ago
I still prefer MySpace...more fun to use...
brianmckenzie 19y ago
I think Doctorow overstates the awkwardness of ignoring a friend request. People do it all the time, I know I do, and I've never accepted a 'top friends' request. There's a hidden benefit if people use the 'ignore' feature properly: you get a better idea of who your friends are. Someone ignoring a friend request can be very telling.
dreish 19y ago
Excuse me if this is a bad idea, since I ditched the social network trend after a few minutes on Friendster some years ago. It seems that the design ought to have however many different levels of friends you want, with the inner circles seeing everything on your page that the outer circles can see, plus some more, without necessarily knowing the name of the circle they're in. That way you could have Public (not friended at all) < Acquaintances < Business associates < Family < Close friends (or vice versa, or combining the previous two, depending on how you relate to your family) < Secret circle of shame. Or a directed acyclic graph instead of a single path, I guess, as long as you only allow people access to that feature if they promise they understand how to use it. (Whose social life is that complicated?)

48 points by ivankirigin 19y ago

This is the best anti-social-networking article I've read yet. Choice quote: You'd think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It's not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there's a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I'd cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, "Am I your friend?" yes or no, this instant, please.

Dauntless 19y ago
I admit I have a lot of pending friends' requests... I was hoping they were going to expire but it looks like Facebook haven't implemented this very useful feature.
- smelendez 19y ago
  Just click the decline/ignore/whatever button. It doesn't tell them.
zaidf 19y ago
May be you should just not friend them? It's as easy as friending them.
- coffeeaddicted 19y ago
  It's only as easy when you look at it from the technical side (two buttons - click one). From a more social point of view there's a big difference (how big depends certainly on each person).
rkts 19y ago
Simple solution: change your privacy settings.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]

damien 19y ago

I've never understood how Facebook got to be so big in the first place with their policy of requiring to sign up to do anything. I've never needed to see a Facebook page that badly that I'd want to spend the time signing up for yet another website that I never use. (And why is Facebook banned from BugMeNot?) Facebook is the new AOL... hadn't thought of it that way, but it does seem like an appropriate analogy.

mrtron 19y ago
Facebook the new AOL? Absolutely the best analogy.
- damien 19y ago
  Has anyone written a Facebook App that gives Usenet access?
  - run4yourlives 19y ago
    I'm going to write one that sends you free cd's with "software" on them.
Xichekolas 19y ago
Easy. Facebook was seen as the in thing on campus. If you had a Facebook profile, you were hip and cool and cutting edge. After a few months in 2004 it got to the point that not having a profile meant people simply forgot who you were (because they couldn't read your profile like they could everyone elses). Obviously it influenced none of your close friends, but people you just met would judge you by your profile and decide whether or not to include you in the future. It was also a great way to find your friend's hot friends and set up a meeting somehow. The fact you had to give them your college email address and a password was no barrier. Heck, not having to choose a user name or design your profile yourself made it easier to sign up. (I can answer this since I was in college at the time it got started.)
- brlewis 19y ago

alaskamiller 19y ago

This Facebook backlash trend is interesting.

jotto 19y ago
i think the trend is only with the tech-crowd, we'll see if this spreads to non-techy people, but i think the myspace crowd enjoys where facebook is at right now - self expression, maximum friend count etc... you can get value out of facebook, just add the friends who are truly in your inner-circle, or those that were and moved away. you can also prevent yourself from being searched for, so when someone else says i can't find you on facebook, you can say a) oh, i'm not on facebook, or b) oh i have the privacy settings on, i'll send an invite to you
- nickb 19y ago
  Hmm... Facebook is full of techie crowd. All those college people are quite competent when it comes to using the Web. All you need is one: "X purchased [porn dvd] from Y" in your feed and all your 'friends' are gonna laugh at you and ridicule you and it will leave you with sour feeling in your mouth. Or they'll criticize your tastes and judge you by the crap you buy. Exodus from FB has already begun.
  - sspencer 19y ago
    Pfft. Anyone who would ridicule me for buying porn is right to do so. Porn is freely available on the internet. Seriously, though: I could care less about what shows up on the feeds. Anyone who would criticize or judge me for what I buy isn't among my friends, in real life or on facebook. Worried about your boss (as Doctorow says, you pretty much have to friend this one if they come a-courtin') seeing too much? Just twiddle the privacy settings so he or she only sees the most innocuous of updates. While there are many valid criticisms of facebook, I have never worried once about the ones you listed. Just my 2 cents.

andreyf 19y ago

It's funny how quickly moods vary between "facebook is unstoppable" to "facebook is in a nosedive for disaster"... They seem to be good at listening to users and fixing mistakes, but they don't seem to have much foresight in their strategies - Integrating my Amazon purchases onto my feed? Kind of neat, but I already do that with anything I want to share via a bookshare application...

raghus 19y ago

By 10am this morning, a friend of mine had already taken two movie quizzes and a trivia challenge - as faithfully reported by Flixster's PublishActionOfUser. I wonder what happens if her co-worker and FB friend, who might not like her too much shows her FB profile to their boss. It's one thing to let people waste time on your site - it's quite another to tell everyone exactly what they did and when they did it.

sabat 19y ago

Corey Doctorow is a tool. OK, that's argumentum ad hominem, so let's look at why he's being a tool this particular here time. Bullshit argument. If you don't want to hear from the guy who beat you up, don't add him -- or better yet, write back and say "you beat me up, and you're lucky I don't track you down and let the air out of your tires every day for a week." Social networks are not for pussies. They're for people who are ready to face society and its weirdos. Perhaps Corey Doctorow isn't just a tool, but also a pussy.

nostrademons 19y ago
Having been on lots of social networks (DeadJournal, LiveJournal, Friendster, uJournal, Plogs, MySpace, and Facebook, in that order), Doctorow's basically right-on when it comes to what real people do. I've had friends tell me, several times, "We're all on (GreatestJournal|MySpace|Facebook) now; come join us." Mass migrations between social networks are not as rare as people who are on their first social network tend to think. Maybe ordinary people are pussies too.
- sabat 19y ago
  "Mass migrations between social networks are not as rare as people who are on their first social network tend to think." Is that what Corey is complaining about? I read that he hates being stalked. I think he likes complaining about hating being stalked. Regardless, the fear of social networking because the "wrong" people might find you -- that's what makes Corey a pussy. What difference does it make if your friends move to new social nets? No one is forcing you to do anything. Politely tell them you're giving up social networking. In any event: much ado about nothing.

johnarama 19y ago

I still prefer MySpace...more fun to use...

brianmckenzie 19y ago

I think Doctorow overstates the awkwardness of ignoring a friend request. People do it all the time, I know I do, and I've never accepted a 'top friends' request. There's a hidden benefit if people use the 'ignore' feature properly: you get a better idea of who your friends are. Someone ignoring a friend request can be very telling.

dreish 19y ago

Excuse me if this is a bad idea, since I ditched the social network trend after a few minutes on Friendster some years ago. It seems that the design ought to have however many different levels of friends you want, with the inner circles seeing everything on your page that the outer circles can see, plus some more, without necessarily knowing the name of the circle they're in. That way you could have Public (not friended at all) < Acquaintances < Business associates < Family < Close friends (or vice versa, or combining the previous two, depending on how you relate to your family) < Secret circle of shame. Or a directed acyclic graph instead of a single path, I guess, as long as you only allow people access to that feature if they promise they understand how to use it. (Whose social life is that complicated?)