
Facebook is just fine - cmod
https://medium.com/how-to-use-the-internet/fb9f44469f92
======
jmduke
I feel like people on HN just want Facebook to fail. (Or be "disrupted.")

Facebook lets me chat with my girlfriend, my grandparents, and my college
roommate all at the same time. It lets me upload pictures of my new apartment
for people to see. It lets me comment with a bunch of other angry misanthropes
about how the Heat are gonna blow it this year. Until another service lets me
do that in one browser tab, I'm fine with sticking with Facebook.

(I notice a huge correlation, too, with people's feelings about Facebook and
people's level of extroversion/social aptitude in general. I think some
people, website or no website, are going to want to keep to themselves -- and
no app is ever going to change that.)

~~~
david927
This is Hacker News; the audience is comprised of people who could re-write
the core of Facebook in a heartbeat and they are extremely critical. They're
also quite smart; they know Facebook lets you chat with your girlfriend.

What they're saying is that Facebook is not working the way it should. It's
partially due to its popularity, but it has diminished its usefulness.

Try this: Open it up right now and read the first 10 to 20 status updates and
then count how many you care about, then count how many are important in any
way. After doing that a few times (and trying to manage what updates I see, to
improve things), I closed my account. (And I'm an extrovert!)

We are Hacker News. We know that technology and its uses is in a constant
dialectic. Our members include Zuckerberg and very probably his successor.
It's nothing personal; it's just how this works.

~~~
tlarkworthy
"Open it up right now and read the first 10 to 20 status updates and then
count how many you care about"

Repeat the experiment with a news paper, I think you will find facebook's news
feed is still more interesting than other media forms.

~~~
patrickaljord
Or repeat the experiment with gmail or any mail client or twitter. Still
useful.

------
grandalf
My facebook feed is mostly spam. Mostly app ads and very lame things that
distant acquaintances have liked.

Facebook ignores the people who I tend to "like". It ignores the profiles I
look at periodically. It ignores the people who I message with.

Facebook forgets which setting I prefer (most recent vs most popular) again
and again.

Facebook shows me the same annoying ads again and again even though I don't
click on them and spend no time hovering over them in the mobile app.

Facebook knows that I continue to log in at least twice a day and that rarely
is there any new information for me, since my friends have all drastically
curtailed their facebook usage.

I think it's too late. Soon the habit of checking facebook will disappear.

My advice. Remove the ads immediately, create different experiences for people
with 100 friends vs 300 vs 500 vs 1000 vs 3000. Don't ever show the same
spammy stuff twice unless the recipient likes it. The fact that my distant
high school acquaintance likes Samsung is of ZERO value to me and frankly it's
incredibly annoying to be told about the major corporations that distant
acquaintances have clicked the like button about again and again and again.

Today I got an email with stuff I "missed" on Facebook. This makes me think
that Facebook is dying. Just take the advice in the above paragraph and
restore it to its previously useful state.

~~~
chaostheory
> My facebook feed is mostly spam. Mostly app ads and very lame things that
> distant acquaintances have liked.

Do you hide any of it from your feed?

I do this periodically, and I don't have anything lame or spammy. It's just
like what's said in the article.

~~~
grandalf
it's not possible to hide all of the content that ends up in the feed. If I
could I would.

~~~
andrewfong
A little hiding goes a long way. I only hide if I notice repeat offenders
(happens about every other week), and signal to noise ratio hovers around 1 to
1 for me.

------
tokenadult
I see that now we are going to have debates among different columnists who
write for medium.com, which may spice up the content a bit. I agree with this
author more than I agreed with the last author, who wrote decrying Facebook.
Sure, I have been careful to select friends for their capacity to maintain
civil, thoughtful conversation, but now that I have a circle of friends like
that, living in countries around the world, Facebook is a convenient medium
for all of us to have conversations on. I like Facebook because I see my
friends there.

I have written before here on Hacker News, "Facebook will go the way of AOL,
still being a factor in the industry years from now, but also serving as an
example of a company that could never monetize up to the level of the hype
surrounding it." I used to see friends on AOL. I never felt an obligation to
help AOL monetize just because of that. Networks are a dime a dozen. Right
now, Facebook is a very convenient network, and I like it. I do not predict
that Facebook will make a lot of money because of users like me.

~~~
dasil003
Talking about Facebook is the ultimate bike-shedding discussion. Everybody,
and I mean literally everybody inside and outside of the tech world has an
opinion. That's fine, but when people start extrapolating their opinion to
predict the fate of Facebook (and this applies more to the previous article
than this one) I just have to laugh. I'm sure Facebook will make a fascinating
topic for anthropologists 50 years from now, but in the meantime I don't need
a slew of columnists going all Nostradamus on the subject. What one likes or
dislikes about FB, or tips on how to use it are all potentially good topics,
but the grand predictions are just so much noise.

~~~
enraged_camel
I agree thst predictions by themselves are noise. However, predictions that
are based on analogy are fascinating. Mark Twain said, "History does not
repeat itself, but it does rhyme." We see this _all_ the time in the
technology sector alone. For example, back in the 80s companies used to buy
IBM servers because the thought was that nobody would be fired for buying the
safe product. As a result, IBM stagnated in the very area in which it was most
competitive. These days, we see Oracle in the exact same spot. Their
salespeople use the exact same "fear, uncertainty and doubt" strategy and
therefore it is safe to predict that they will end up just like IBM in many
ways, just like Facebook will end up like AOL.

~~~
dasil003
I guess my problem with Facebook predictions is that the majority of them seem
to simply be someone writing about their personal experience with Facebook and
then extrapolating that out. I honestly think that what blogger X or tech
journalist Y thinks about using Facebook is utterly immaterial to the future
of Facebook. They've crossed the chasm, it doesn't matter if the technorati
think Facebook is "done", they don't need us, and our nerd rage will not
affect their future in any way.

------
dvt
The crux of the essay is the following:

> Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby.

As soon as I saw it, I said to myself: "boy oh boy, he better give some hard
evidence." The article goes on even without providing _anecdotal_ evidence,
let alone anything to the extent I was expecting or hoping. In fact, the
entire discussion seems to be about the hiding feature. Yeah, everyone knows
about it (and more and more people are using it), but I'm not sure how using a
destructive feature of a service makes the service _more_ necessary (I would
argue for the opposite). If I hide 90% of my "friends" from my feed, for
example, what's the point of Facebook? Apart from the ego-boosting friend-
count (which I might also hide).

Now, going back to the initial (bolded!) argument: _Facebook keeps me
connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby._ I think that this
is just simply not true. Of course, a definition of "care deeply" would be
needed, but my assumption here is that we're talking about moms, dads,
sisters, brothers, aunts, BFFs, and the like -- NOT ex-girlfriends/boyfriends
or classmates from high school that helped us out that one time on that one
biology project in freshman year. If I only contacted my mom or dad through
Facebook, my parents would first of all be quite mad -- and second of all, our
relationship would suffer. People that I _care deeply_ about get emails, phone
calls, Skype calls, text messages, sometimes even snail-mail from me! I'm not
sure how the OP expects us to connect Facebook to "caring deeply." Again, some
evidence (or an actual argument) would've been nice.

I don't hate Facebook, but more often than not, I find myself just using it
when I'm bored and semi-creeping around seeing what X or Y is up to and
randomly clicking on that "cute girl that's a friend of a friend of a friend"
(incidentally, this is what most people use it for). "Creeping on Facebook,"
has in fact, become a relatively common colloquialism; I wouldn't even
attribute a negative quality to the idea, but I _would_ argue it's a
fundamental failure of FB (and something that should capitalize on). I posted
about this before, but I really believe that the next "big social thing" will
be a start-up that will somehow make it easy to approach people you don't know
and spark up a conversation. There are _so many_ people on FB, and yet most of
us hide 90% of the people we're friends with and we don't add the ones we
might find interesting but don't know. That doesn't seem "just fine" to me.

Oh yeah, go ahead and add me on Facebook.

~~~
gfodor
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
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?

~~~
gfodor
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
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.

------
jonathanjaeger
A million times this. Curate your feed for content ('like' good pages) and
hide those 'friends' you're not interested in.

What other place can you chat easily with friends far away, find a last minute
ticket for a concert from someone who has an online identity without paying
scalper prices, find out an old friend moved to your area, keep in touch with
the masses who connect with you for other reasons (e.g. I run a music
community and chat with users on Facebook sometimes), and the list goes on.
Show me more ads, I don't care! They're not horrible popups and the News Feed
ones are only somewhat intrusive.

~~~
jdminhbg
> Curate your feed for content

Why in the world would I want to do this? I eventually gave up on Facebook
because I spent more time "curating" it than using it, and the end result was
awkward conversations with friends who assumed I had seen something when in
fact I was no longer subscribed to their baby pictures.

> What other place can you ...

Mostly email, iMessage/SMS/BBM/WhatsApp, and Twitter.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
I don't have 1000 friends on Facebook, it's pretty easy to curate 200-300
friends. It takes a few seconds to remove someone from your feed.

>iMessage/SMS/BBM/WhatsApp, and Twitter.

Very few of my friends use Twitter and I can't easily drop links and have
long, fast conversations with people. Facebook chat integrates with the
private messages seamlessly. It's a much better experience than texting (how
can I easily send many links) or sending 140 characters or less.

------
nullc
I must confess to giggling at the authors examples of 'signal':

> "Lots of signal. Lots of friends becoming parents.

> Getting engaged. Couples falling in love. Babies. [...]

> Friends and acquaintances off on adventures. Beautiful

> mountain photos [...] Family outings. [...] orphanage

> a good friend of mine runs in Nepal. [...] updates on

> the dog back home on the east coast"

All that stuff sounds like the expected output of a random human condition
generator. Knowing those things wouldn't change my life at all. I trust that
that kind of stuff is happening all on its own without having to take any of
my attention.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. However, I suspect he may be
missing the mark because the audience he's addressing with his "just use
hide!" may well be like me and find all that stuff inane. 'Use hide to reveal
the signal under the noise' doesn't work when there is no signal.

~~~
coldpie
Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I guess I'm selfish: I just don't care about
what's going on in others' lives if it doesn't impact me. I also don't share
what's going on in my life with the Internet, unless I think it would interest
or help someone else like me. (E.g. I started a blog last fall. It has 3
posts. Every post has over 700 words. Social media just isn't my bag.)

I tried using Facebook for about a month, and got overwhelmed with the amount
of boring and infuriating crap that goes through the service. It felt like
reading chain emails from the 90s. Why would anyone subject themselves to that
level of banality?

As you say, different strokes for different folks. It just doesn't do anything
for me.

------
sergiotapia
I agree completely with this cat. Maybe it's because I use Facebook from
Bolivia and ads aren't really shown down here (no market?), but almost of my
timeline posts are nice to see. I also hide dumb, annoying and negative people
but keep them as a friend to avoid hurting feelings.

I get to talk to my immediate family instantly from anywhere in the city,
laptop or mobile phone - what other free service does that?

Facebook isn't terrible, naysayers are just hipsters wanting to hate on
something popular.

~~~
PavlovsCat
_"naysayers are just hipsters wanting to hate on something popular"_

I "hate" Facebook since 2007, when a small forum I was part of and liked a lot
decided to "move to facebook", where it died a really quick and really
pointless death.

It got worse and more idiotic since then, and these days I "hate" facebook for
leaving poop trails everywhere else, too (i.e. sites that only allow facebook
to sign up, "like this" buttons everywhere, that sort of crap). If Facebook,
its users and those who prey on them would refrain from shoving it into my
face 10 times a day, maybe I would feel accordingly. For example, I never
"hated" AOL, it was just something stupid that people do in private. Facebook,
not so much. It's like I normally wouldn't comment on the size and shape of
someone's penis, but if they keep rubbing it into my face, I get kinda bitey.

 _"what other free service does that?"_

What other free service doesn't? There are a million things that would work
the same way, if people used them. Starting with email, IM, and all the
fascinating things one can install on webservers.

See, that's exactly what I mean. The existance and use of facebook leads to me
having to read crap like this, "what other free service does that?". That does
hurt my brain, so I sometimes snarl. That people who don't make the cut come
up with rationalizations for that is kind of expected.

------
shmerl
_> Facebook is just fine.... That’s crazy, right? I mean, Facebook is just a
personal data farm, isn’t it? It’s just a not-too-coy set of dopamine-
optimized actions to trick you into dumping information about yourself into
the magic Zucker Woodchipper?... I’m not denying any of this. It is an ad
machine, in part. But that doesn’t mean Facebook can’t also provide value._

The fact that it provides value doesn't make it fine. The criticism of
Facebook is not about the value it provides, but about the cost they charge
for it. That cost is users' privacy.

Fine social network should serve the purpose of social interactions without
ulterior motives of some hidden entities which profit on users' data. You
can't practically achieve that with such centralized social networks, and
decentralized design makes it more feasible.

~~~
icebraining
Obligatory Eben Moglen interview: [http://betabeat.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-
moglen-like-legit-...](http://betabeat.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-
legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook/)

~~~
shmerl
Great interview, thanks for the pointer :)

------
igorgue
What the heck is is he talking about?

This is facebook, 28 of 29 posts are about pages I liked or pages talking
about pages I like (yeap, like I care about Lakers Nation talking about LeBron
James).

I can't share anything there either because some of my friends and family get
offended by my views (atheist, anarchist, pro-drugs).

I could create lists, but who has time for that? I rather just use leaser
known social networks like Vine and Snapchat where the people are more open
minded.

~~~
brown9-2
You must have missed the whole point of the article - hide people or pages who
post content you don't care about (or never subscribe).

~~~
lizardking
Hiding people will not keep them from seeing your posts. It keeps you from
seeing their posts.

~~~
alagappanr
Using lists and sharing with lists helps you prevent certain people from
seeing your posts.

------
shanelja
I really don't understand the anti-facebook nature of HN users, personally I
think it's a fantastic product, it perfectly fulfills my use case.

I'm 20 years old, I feel that's somehow relevant before I give my long list of
anecdotes.

When I woke up this morning, I checked my feed, 3 notifications! The first
(ranked by importance of course) was that one of my cousins was pregnant. She
lives in Spain, I'm the only member of my family in the UK, how would I
otherwise have found out? Snail mail? Pah! Takes too long and my address isn't
always static for longer than a few months. Phone? Really? Do you know how
much international calls cost when you aren't on a Silly Valley wage?! _E-
Mail? ... Do people actually still do the whole E-Mail thing? And isn't E-Mail
completely broken anyway?_

The second was a party event my friend was throwing and had invited me too
this weekend, it took one click and now I know all about it, I accepted and
left a message.

So in 30 seconds on one application, I've discovered my cousin is going to
have a baby, congratulated her and let her know that I "like" this outcome,
told my friend I'm cool to hang out this weekend and asked him if he wants to
go halves on a Pizza Saturday.

Last night I used it to talk over video with my grandma who's been ill
recently (and also coincidentally lives abroad) because she doesn't know what
a Skoop (Skype) is and MSN no longer exists, but Facebook is still here, she's
already on it and she uses it frequently.

After this I checked up on my company feed to look at photos of my co-workers
birthday party and the comments on the photo I took (and uploaded in seconds
to the internet after applying filters to make him prettier) of him opening
his presents.

I literally just got out of bed and I have a message already from my
girlfriend (who's out of texts) asking me what we're doing tonight, I've told
her it's a surprise and send her a photo to give her a clue.

 _Anyway..._

The point of this is that while you may detest Facebook for whatever privacy
issues you may have (and lets face it, other companies such as our beloved
Google are often much, much worse) it is a fantastic application making it
easier than ever to connect to the people who I actually care about (for the
record, I only keep 40 friends on there), if perhaps a little out of _your_
particular use case.

~~~
dvt
> E-Mail? ... Do people actually still do the whole E-Mail thing? And isn't
> E-Mail completely broken anyway?

It's so funny when people are critical of FB critics ( _I do not_ consider
myself to be a critic of FB, even though my post garnered a lot of debate),
but then go on to criticize email.

Specifically, what's funny is that email is used to transfer magnitudes more
information than FB on a daily basis. So, um... yes? Email is still around.
And people use it. And it's not _broken_ , per se. It's a sort of analogy with
Spotify and radio.. "omg is FM still around? lol!! what noobs"

~~~
shanelja
I was being sarcastic with the E-Mail one - but to be honest among younger
people, at least in my area, you would never meet someone and say "So, what's
your E-Mail address?" - you just ask for their full name and find them on
Facebook, or take their number.

------
tezka
Facebook works for me very well because I don't quite use the news feed as a
social networking feed. I have changed its push model to a pull model. That
means, I have pretty much hidden all of my friends and use the news feed to
only read updates from magazines and pages I am interested in. I however visit
people's profile that I am reminded of every now and then to see whats going
on with their lives. The closer I am to someone the more frequent her/his
profile gets a visit. To make this tractable, I every few months go through a
round of deleting people I don't care about (like someone I've met for a few
minutes and I am sure I will not see again, or if I do I will mostly likely
pretend I don't know the person).

------
tomasien
"Facebook keeps me connected to folks I care deeply about who aren’t nearby."

He goes on to explain the way in which it works for him, but that's the point.
I, for example, don't do anything but see my stream without much hiding and I
love it. I love seeing why my friends having going on, I love the weird swath
of reactions and conversations, I love it. Hell, I love that my aunt bothers
me on Facebook all the time, I would never talk to her otherwise! It's not
everything to everyone, but it's a REALLY important thing to a REALLY huge
amount of people.

It could die. Mobile (or other things) could kill it, I don't deny that, but
it's great. Long live Facebook, until something does what it does better.

------
Zigurd
Of course Facebook is fine, no matter what HN readers think of it. I suspect
I'm typical in minimizing my Facebook use because, if for no more serious
reason, too many instances of a Facebook "app" spamming my contact list.

And yet, I almost certainly count among Facebook's monthly active users. I
cross-post to Facebook. I have family that doesn't grok Google+. There are
even business contacts that prefer Facebook to LinkedIn for whatever reasons.

That might make the value of many Facebook users very low, but as long as
Facebook doesn't stagnate technologically, it's more than just viable.

------
zaphar
I left facebook because I was tired of continually curating their email
notifications. I would clean it all up and then boom something would change
and I have to wade through their settings again and turn off more stuff.

I don't _want_ to ruthlessly curate my social network feed. It killed the
enjoyment for me so I left. Now I get a curated rundown from my wife so I
guess in a way I still have facebook but someone else is doing the curation
for me.

I wonder if there's a product idea there?

------
alphang
I do not agree that having to hide friends so you get a curated News Feed
really works. For me, this is a lot of work just to get Facebook back as a fun
product again - and FB doesn't really provide great, painless tools for
curating your feed. (I'd love a dashboard and power-user shortcuts)

But even if your News Feed looks great, the other side of controlling your FB
experience is How You Share. Sure, we can all create lists for our families
and faraway friends and acquaintances — but trust and relationships evolve,
and pretty soon you're fiddling with "+Family -AuntJenny +HighSchool -Amanda"
just for one little post about your relationship status.

You can deal with this by unfriending or self-censoring yourself, but it's
really not fun to hold your tongue, and there's a social cost to unfriending.

The author is probably right that "Facebook is fine", if you put enough work
into it. But depending on your comfort level, this can mean _a lot_ of work.
So the questions are 1) is this really a user error, or a problem with the
product? and 2) how can Facebook improve this area? and 3) is it even in
Facebook's interest to go down this path?

------
brown9-2
I tend to hide people whose updates are annoying yet I don't want to unfriend
as well, but one thing that strikes me as weird about this arrangement is that
I have essentially set up a one-way sharing relationship with this person -
this person whom I've probably forgot about can see whatever I post, but I'm
ignoring all signs of their existence on the news feed.

To me, that's why this strategy doesn't really seem scalable.

------
ultimoo
I'm really shy about sharing stuff on facebook. Maybe because of the number of
highschool and college folks I have friended there.

So basically I'm a 'scroller' (I have a 20yo real life friend who called me
this term offline).

I do go to facebook to scroll once every couple of days and it is interesting.
I'm just happy that people aren't as shy as I when it comes to posting updates
and uploading photos etc.

------
trustfundbaby
I think the "hiding" process is a bit too heavy handed, what I'd like to see
is a dislike button that __only affects your feed __. So a person would never
actually see that you disliked their post, but facebook could use that data
privately to help you curate you feed. If you keep disliking someone's posts
(and possibly even comments) facebook would show you less and less of them
until they were completely gone from your news feed ...

Not sure it would work so well in light of a recent article on here (I think)
that showed that people in social networks like/upvote things and order of
magnitude more than they dislike/flag things, but I think it would be
interesting to try.

------
alan_cx
Given that people seem not to care that much that government is spying on them
to an industrial level, why would the masses care one jot about the bad side
of facebook, which is broadly privacy concerns?

------
avalaunch
The problem I have with the hiding strategy is that nobody in my network of
friends and family is producing 100% signal and nobody is producing 100%
noise. If I hide all users that ever produce noise I end up with an empty
feed. I need a better way of cutting through the noise - preferably an
algorithm that does it for me.

The other problem I have is that I don't feel comfortable posting all of my
thoughts to all of my friends and family. I could create lists but that really
is a pain.

------
rfatnabayeff
There is a proverb in Russia (actually, it's a quote): "There're someone for
whom even a mare is a fine bride". So, it's not surprising that for someone
Facebook is fine too.

------
bowerbird
craig mod says:

> If you are overtly negative

> (which is different than

> having opinions differing from my own),

> you get hidden.

i didn't know who was writing this when i first read it.

but i still chuckled when i came across that sentence...

and when i looked and it was _craig_mod_, i laughed at loud.

because it's "just fine" if you disagree with craig mod, just as long as you
kiss his ass while you're doing it.

otherwise, he will peg you as "overtly negative"...

-bowerbird

~~~
sergiotapia
On HN you don't need to leave your signature, we can tell who wrote the post.

~~~
tucif
I think that works the same for email, we can tell who sent it by address and
name, but people still sign it, most of the time with name only. I do.

Weirder here, and I really hope he doesn't have/do that on a twitter account
though...

~~~
harrisonpowers
Signatures in email have merit, especially when correspondents use a client
that strips the email addresses from quoted text in replies. The email address
will sometimes be replaced with simply the contact name. While referencing
such an email, the only way I can decipher which "Mark" or "Joe" sent reply in
a thread is by his signature.

Outlook is, at times, guilty of this.

------
abalashov
_(Hiding from newsfeed, it should be noted, is different from unfriending —
they’ll never know.)_

Well, they will know, because you never, ever like or comment on their stuff,
like ever. :-)

------
United857
The author should try Path. The use case is what the author wants, a more
limited FB with just his close friends and quality original content.

------
soup10
Anyone else read the post and take an immediate dislike to the guy? Maybe it's
the new yorker in me, but hiding people who exude negativity? Cynicism is
cherished way of life for some people sir. Also why do you like baby pictures
so much, ugh.

Why the passive aggression? just unfriend people you don't like.

What else? Who honestly cares that much about inane facebook posts that they
feel more connected. _shrug_

------
suredo
Hiding what most people post on Facebook is how I spend a minimum amount of
time on Facebook too..

------
edwardunknown
It's not an ad machine, it stores your face and personal information and that
data will be sold as a service as soon as things start to look bad for them.
Nobody cares about personalized ads on the internet, they care that in a few
years they'll be walking down the street and with just a camera and a computer
anybody who's willing to pay will know everything about them.

