
Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/why-facebook-is-the-junk-food-of-socializing
======
rayiner
These articles ignore people’s real alternatives. I’m in my 30s and have a
small child. While I love to fly into Chicago or New York for a night of
drinking with my still-single friends, that’s not really something I get to do
more than once every couple of months. Seeing my wife’s extended family (3,000
miles away in the west coast) is a once every year thing, and seeing my
extended family (7,000 miles away in Asia) is maybe a once a decade thing. But
Facebook lets me see the woodworking project my Chicago friend is working on,
the delicious things my father in law is making for the holidays, and at least
know what my cousins’ kids look like these days. Far from being junk food,
Facebook lets me maintain the most basic and important human relationships.

What did people in my situation do before Facebook? My parents, like most baby
boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person.
They’d sit down in front of the TV after work. Their social lives were narrow,
focused heavily on home life and the kids. That’s what Facebook is replacing,
and it’s a huge improvement.

~~~
caterama
Having quit Facebook some 4+ years ago, I think about these things too and
have come to the conclusion that:

a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or
the food anyone is making or eating* .

b) A solution that existed before Facebook were X-Mas cards. So, I think
that's what I'll be doing when I no longer see my parents and close friends
daily.

* On a side note, my mom calls my grandma for an hour or so weekly and they frequently talk about what they cooked and exchange recipes, but that's more personal than a Facebook/Instagram post.

~~~
anigbrowl
This isn't helpful. Fine, you don't care about your distant friends/relatives
daily activities, but that's no help to _those of us who do_. I live in
California and some people who are personally important to me live in florida.
I talk to them at least once a day but on an ad-hoc basis, so email isn't that
suitable.

Edit: corrected geographic confusion

Really, what is the point of a post like yours other than to negate the post
that came before it by articulating why you don't care about the issue raised?

~~~
sonnyz
I think the point of his/her post is to show that from his/her perspective,
the "connection" you get to friends and family via facebook isn't valuable.
Although it may be to some, it isn't to everyone.

I have to agree, as someone that quit many years ago and hasn't looked back
since. I still communicate with my long distance relatives, just not publicly.
I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls
to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos,
directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use
Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods.

This way, I only get information/photos that is meant for me to see. Not just
every day stuff that's going on in everyone's life. To me, that's not
important to my relationships, and is really a waste of my time that I can be
using with my family in my house. The interactions I do share, though, is
extremely important to me.

~~~
rayiner
> I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone
> calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google
> photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen
> to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods.

This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things
Facebook handles natively.

~~~
2-4-Flinching
> This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things
> Facebook handles natively.

If you're important to them, then people will do whatever they need to keep in
touch with you. Inconvenience is when they don't care enough to keep in
contact with you. While in a perfect world everyone would accept your impose
line of communication, in your case Facebook, everyones preference is
different.

~~~
sp527
I’d add that the relationships where you’re willing to go the extra distance
are the only ones that matter. Quality not quantity.

~~~
kiriakasis
so... you could also be the one to go the extra mile and use facebook...

don't misunderstand i log in about once a month but because i have other
platform (and because i'm terrible at keeping in touch), but other than
political or idelogical reasons why not use it for your family convenience?

~~~
mdorazio
I think you've kind of missed the point the posters above are making. Facebook
is _impersonal_. That's why it's convenient - it takes no effort whatsoever to
share everything with everyone. As a result, the value of shared information
to people who care about quality relationships is much lower than if two
people deliberately communicate with only each other about something.

Put another way, if your family/friends can't be bothered to actually
communicate with you one-on-one about things in their lives because it's less
convenient than posting to everyone, then those relationships must not be very
valuable. To those of us who care about maintaining quality relationships,
convenience is a non-factor. I would much rather have lunch with a friend a
few times a year than read their stream-of-life facebook posts on any kind of
regular basis, even though the former is several orders of magnitude less
convenient.

------
surrey-fringe
Ever since deleting facebook I've felt so much ___. It's only once I quit the
site I was able to take a long hard look at my perception of ____ and realized
that everyone else does ____ while I should do _____. I realized that I'm
actually ____, not ____. I started handling my _____ relationships in a
healthier, more ____ manner.

~~~
rxhernandez
I deleted my Facebook in 2010 and it stayed deleted until the end of 2016. Now
I get invited to more events, my friends no longer feel like distant strangers
when I see them for the first time in months and I know how all my family is
doing. It really sucks seeing how much more of a life some people have through
facebook but research is a lifestyle and I knew what I signed up for. Your
miles may vary though as I have the discipline to not look at it every
hour(not because I'm intrinsically any better than you but because I got used
to running mental marathons for 6 years).

~~~
ben_jones
As someone toying with the idea of "getting back into" social media, how did
you go about making your profile "normal"? I'm not the type to take tons of
selfies, so do I just start out with a shitty profile picture? I feel like
it'll look like a fake account, or me like a weird dude, compared to my
friends who all have amazing profiles.

^^^ And this is the type of mentality that makes me not want to use social
media :tm:.

~~~
sandov
I'm the complete opposite. I want to get back into facebook because I want
other people to see all the cool stuff I'm doing and feed my ego, but I know
that doing it would be inconsistent with my desire for a more free society,
and I hate most people anyway.

------
chiefalchemist
I confess, most of what I consume via the internet is of little use to me.
Sure, some of it might be interesting; some of it my present itself as
relevant; but most of it (the truth is) life would go on without it.

Don't take this the wrong way, but push come to shove, HN falls into this low
truly impactful life nutrition as well. This is not a critique. It's just that
despite my semi-best attempts the signal to noice ratio remains suboptimal.

~~~
matte_black
Don’t be so apologetic, HN shouldn’t care if you think it’s trash.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Please don't put words in my mouth. It said nothing of the sort.

The message is this: What so often (read: too often) masquerades as meaningful
and of substance - in the grand scheme of things - really isn't. It creates a
self-serving blind-spot. And thus reactions such as yours.

------
whatimherefor
So as a girl working in tech, all I remember about facebook back when I had
one was everytime a new girl started working at our company, all the guys
flocked to one guys computer and they stalked the crap out of her one
Facebook, and by the time she walked through the door they knew who she was
dating, had already decided he wasn't good enough for her and were already in
competition to date her and trying to woo her by pretending to have all the
same interest and the poor girl is like first day on the job and she thinks
shes going to have a normal life.

I've seen this happen at three tech companies multiple times at each so I'm
not willing to entertain the group of guys who I KNOW are going to comment on
this and say "well not every guy is like that". True, but it only takes a few
at every company to make a girl feel like a targeted object more than an
employee.

Once the facebook search came out (way after I got rid of it) I was a manager
managing about 25 guys in my tech firm and they used to use the facebook
search to search by age, relationship status of all the females in the company
constantly on the prowl.

Was so gross and terrifying and made me happy I didnt have one.

Another time about three years after college a guy I had never seen or met
before came up to me at a restaurant and started blabbing on about my life,
asking me if I was still dating that deuschbag from college and openly
admitted who knew all of this from my facebook back in college and asked me
what I was up to now. I mean wow, couldn't possible be more happy that people
DON't know what I'm up to.

Not to mention old guys are creepy and use it to stare at all the bikini pics
of their friends daughters.

I wish I could be ignorant and dumb enough to not know all this but
unfortunately I work with a bunch of creepy men twice my age in tech for years
now and they assume I don't notice these things.

If you are a girl in tech, youre better off not having a facebook, you
honestly cannot even begin to fathom how many men are keeping tabs on you.

and here come the downvotes....

~~~
gkya
> and here come the downvotes....

I'm not a mod but I'll still say that this is frowned upon. Wrt the downvote
itself, I promptly rewarded you with mine for your representing of stalking as
a male only phenomenon. This blanket statements blaming men for everything
really grosses me out and does not help at all with the feminist cause. Saying
"hey you're all nasty pigs" is not persuasive at all, especially when I at the
receiving end of the attack am not at all guilty of what you blame every
single person with.

------
matthewwiese
Interesting article, and I'm usually a fan of Nautilus pieces, but isn't this
a bit obvious? Almost like 2017 is getting to be the year it's fashionable to
poo poo social media (and Facebook in particular). Haven't used the site since
about 2010 'cause the rank smell of the Skinner box made my nose curl from
afar.

I'm baffled that psych studies have to be referenced for people to see the
obvious; and I'm certainly not on a higher plane of self-aware existence,
either.

~~~
dawhizkid
It's not obvious.

The fact that sugar and refined carbs (pasta/rice/bread) is bad for you is not
even obvious to most people.

~~~
Radim
Life is bad for you.

Did you know oxygen was once a terrible, toxic substance that was "bad for
you"? [0]

It still is, to some degree. But cheap sources of energy always win in the
end.

My point is that we (as humans) suck at processing some things and
appreciating the true _timescale_ of optimization. Our bodies fight old cargo
cult wars, an exercise in wanton complexity. Hardly an argument against
change.

I suspect the same applies to the "badness" of junk food and social media,
except it has accumulated less baggage and hence can steer faster.

_[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event)
_

------
Top19
Suggestion: go to church.

It’s a built in community of people who are likely there because of ritual and
tradition (am Catholic) and do not care about talking about startups or
entrepreneurship (a breathtaking relief sometimes).

Church and religion has gotten a lot well-justified complaints over the years,
but by liberal and moderately-conservative people abandoning it in droves, it
only made it more conservative and dogmatic sadly.

Also if you think “hey I can’t go to church they don’t believe in XYZ” just
know that something like 40%+ of priests believe that gay marriage is possibly
within the church’s right to support (again citing Catholic stuff here), so
there is a lot more support than you think but political change is hard and
it’s harder if you stay home.

Also I will say that it’s almost “cool” to go to church now. It’s been, again
for good reasons such as pointless cultural battles in the 90’s that American
churches waged, cool to not do religious stuff but now it’s so passé. Whenever
I see a person railing against religion on Reddit I can’t help but think they
are exactly the person we could have used in the 1920s at the Snopes Trial,
but otherwise their viewpoint is entirely unhelpful and conformist today.

~~~
CorpOverreach
> Also if you think “hey I can’t go to church they don’t believe in XYZ”

What if that "XYZ" is the god that the church believes in? Or no god at all? I
really wish there was an alternative to "go to church", because I do agree
with you on the community aspect. To me it's just a shame that probably the
most efficient way of connecting with people is still via religious beliefs.

~~~
Top19
There is an old joke that Wikipedia doesn’t work in theory but it does in
reality. In the same way, Church’s don’t make a lot of sense but they’ve
worked for thousands of years. I kind of think of it as a thing like the
family, which also doesn’t make sense in some regards, but it’s proven its
“value”. I hate using that argument because you could argue for a lot of
stupid things that way, but it’s one way of looking at the situation.

Also I noticed you used the word “efficient”. What if meeting people is
supposed to be inefficient, what if “efficiency” in meeting people is the
worst possible thing to “optimize” for. Sometimes when meeting people is slow,
when you’re forced to get along because “oh man this guy goes to the same
church and could tell on me if I’m rude and whatever he’s the most interesting
person I’ve met so far” you force yourself to discover better understandings
and deeper connections with people. Maybe that in the end is what religion is
about.

EDIT: Also something beautiful about being connected to the humans of
thousands of years ago and doing similar rituals as them. The connection to
human ancestry, sometimes more so than god, is another beautiful thing about
religion. Even among the Chinese, which is not a very theistic society, this
is noted in their traditions of ancestor shrines and worship

~~~
0xcde4c3db
I feel like you didn't answer the main question. What if I recognize the
potential value in all of the things you mention, but don't believe in God and
don't want to lie to people about it?

~~~
jjeaff
You don't have to lie to people. You can go to church and not believe. I know
several people that do that.

So, I'm assuming that you also have some qualms about how Facebook or Google
does business?

Does that mean you refuse to use Facebook or Google?

By using commercial services, you are actually supporting them financially.
You can go to most any church without donating anything at all.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
It's not really a question of the church's "business". It's that I do not
believe in God, and lying to people about something that central to their
identity seems like a bad thing to do. I'm skeptical that I'd be accepted in
the _vast_ majority of churches as an open nonbeliever without continual
attempts to "convert" me [1], particularly in the area where I live. I've
heard of churchgoers and even priests/pastors who are atheists, but very few
ones who are actually open about it to their congregation.

[1] Incidentally, it's not that I'm not open to changing my beliefs, it's that
(in my experience) believers are _aggressively awful_ at converting
nonbelievers. In many cases they don't even accept that it's possible to be a
nonbeliever, immediately falling into "angry at God" tropes.

------
Steeeve
Facebook shouldn't be used to replace social interactions, it should be used
to augment them.

It is easy to make facebook bad, and that's a problem, but its a problem that
all social sites have. If you go to a message board and that message board has
frequent posters who pride themselves in stirring the pot to increase
activity, it might be good short term, but long term its a poor habit for
those posters and its a miserable experience for other users.

If you use facebook as an outlet for negativity you'll find that misery loves
company. If you use facebook to interact with people in comments, but don't
interact in real life it will turn hollow at some point.

I feel like there are two problems. First is that people prefer to vilify
facebook than to offer solutions to whatever problem they are facing. Second
is that there is no roadmap to steering one's own facebook experience into a
positive one once it has gone south.

For instance... if in 2016 you were active in politics because of the
election, it's likely that you still have a bunch of political discussion and
news within your news feed and ads. And all of that is increasingly negative
and polarizing as those businesses and interests try desperately to maintain
your mindshare. If you want to get rid of it, there is no preference. You have
to train it with your newfound lack of interest. You have to fix your own
behavior, facebook doesn't have a way of fixing it for you.

The same kind of thing applies to real social interactions. If you isolated
yourself into online-only interaction or online-centric interaction, you have
to change. But how? Well, it's not that hard if you put thought into it, but
few people actually put any thought into it.

I don't know what facebok or any platform can do to resolve this problem.
Maybe there's a secondary niche market for online social coaching or profile
fixing.

------
j_s
I use the [http://www.fbpurity.com/](http://www.fbpurity.com/) extension to
micro-manage what shows up on my newsfeed.

"Junk food" is probably putting it nicely, many skip straight to comparing to
one of various illicit drugs.

~~~
kenning
I think cigarettes are a great comparison. I heard it a few years back.

When popular, a huge amount of the population used cigarettes despite growing
research showing that it had a slight but consistent harmful effect. A hooked
individual is unlikely to stop using even when given this evidence, as the
product is addictive and gets stronger with network effects. Younger
generations understood the harm better and had to avoid regular temptation to
engage.

Comparisons to heroin are overblown. Nobody is losing their identity, money or
life due to facebook. It's just a little bad and very addictive.

------
jackvalentine
Google Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nautil....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nautil.us/blog/why-
facebook-is-the-junk-food-of-socializing)

------
Mc_Big_G
Would you use an alternative to facebook if...?

* It was free of advertisements

* Posts were fully encrypted so even facebook couldn't see read them
    
    
      Meaning:
    
        * There's no public posting
    
        * They can't data mine
    
        * They can't sell your data
    

* You could create different user groups to post to

* Everyone in a group had their own server side and/or local copy of all posts to that group

* You could unfriend or ignore users

* You could create filters by users or groups and keep them off your main "timeline" (also complex filters based on attributes like title, content, photos)

* You could delete your copy of posts but not other people's copy

* You could easily download all the data including posts and pictures any time you want

* You could easily set up internal or private "facebooks" on your own servers

* If you forget your password, there's no recovering anything.

* You don't need a separate app for private messaging

~~~
vlehto
I don't want user groups where people can discuss.

I'm extrovert and I'm drawn to comment sections of everything. As a result I
get stuck on facebook comment sections. And this kills the time I would use
for face to face socializing.

Here I am, writing to comment section...

------
7171u
I have deactivated FB since last Jan. Never felt any urge to return. But
Reddit seems to be hard to quit as the majority of the time it delivers the
garbage disguised as information. As a person who was on FB only for news
feeds, Reddit seems to be the perfect shelter for me.

------
morpheuskafka
Anyone who choses to use FB is just not thinking. I could get joining
Instagram, Snapchat, etc b/c of friends. But even if you don't care about
privacy, don;t care about algorithms censoring human expression, and don't
care about unauthorized physiological experiments to influence your emotions,
why would you choose a platform with tons of ads, a terrible UI that fills up
timelines with every time someone uploads a new profile, is slow as hell, and
is a haphazard mess of sloppily assembled groups with all-caps titles. It's
not attractive. It's not addictive. It's both morally and graphically
disgusting at every level.

I'm beginning to think the latter is intentional, just like scam email with
copious misspellings.

~~~
nordsieck
> Anyone who choses to use FB is just not thinking.

One of the answers to your implied question is events. I belong to one of
many, many subcultures who organize almost exclusively through facebook. This
one happens to be related to dancing.

There are around 5 weekly events held regularly, along with a number regular
of monthly-ish classes and around one special event per month held locally.
Facebook is just way better than the alternative (meetup), and better than the
old way (email lists).

~~~
kbart
How it's better than email list? Getting an email event invitation once in a
while looks way better than checking Facebook's spammy notifications every day
to see if something is coming up.

~~~
nordsieck
> How it's better than email list?

1\. Organizers can update events instead of sending a new message

2\. Organizers get to see a list of people who claim they're going

3\. The message thread and images associated with events are much easier to
deal with instead of throwing everything into one big slush pile that is an
email list.

4\. It makes much more sense to create events way ahead of time (think a year
out).

5\. It's easier for participants to see which events their friends are going
to.

Ultimately, email just isn't very good for a number of use cases and events is
one of them. These are also some of the same reasons why people started using
wikis or sharepoint instead of email.

------
splittingTimes
I also dont get all that hate either. Just use it as a tool for what its good
for. For me that is mainly to stay in the know about (1) events hosted by
friends, (2) activities in common interest groups, (3) the life of friends and
family overseas.

\- Dont use your real name, gender, nationality, etc. Just create a random
identity.

\- Dont post pictures, ask friends to not post pics of you. Remove all tags.
NEVER EVER POST PICS OF YOUR KIDS.

\- tailor your news feed: Aggressivly remove/unfollow people/groups that add
only trivial noise and no interesting content. In doing so, I actually started
to enjoy my thinned out feed.

\- comb through your friend list once a year (I always do after New Years) and
clean house. Some people collect friends like trophys and are proud of their
1254 contacts. Instead, do the opposite: Try to keep it as small as possible.
Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact? Remove people that
do not add value to your life.

\- Dont use the messanger app. Turn off all notifications.

EDIT: Why jump through all these hoops? FB gives me a unique value. The trick
is to fold all the virtual social network back into real life. This is
especially useful when you are in multiple disjunct groups. Most of my social
activities are organized through FB:

\- arrange the next casual soccer kick

\- see when is the next social dance and who is going

\- friend organizes a christmas dinner party

\- other friend goes to a science slam, I might join

\- who wants to go bouldering this weekend?

\- see this neat trick in the "Upcycling" group how to reuse an old ...

\- oh, this old cafe in my borough is getting kicked out. Friends are
organizing a solidarity march.

Since almost everybody is on it, organizing/getting this info would be so much
harder without FB.

I also like to keep people in my feed that have a contrairian view point to
mine. Keeps you sharp and sometimes you learn that your viewpoint might not
have the best argument...

~~~
git-pull
> Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact? Remove people that
> do not add value to your life.

I do a different test. It's called "Do you care about me?"

If I got in a car crash over the weekend, would you even know? If you found
out, would you visit me in the hospital?

If the answer is yes: but they're family, I already have their contact info.
For non-family, that group fluctuates, and more often than not, it's zero. I'm
fine with the number staying there. Benefits include: Less drama, breakups,
regrets, and more time to get work done.

If the answer is no, which it mostly is: I feel I save time and am more self-
honest not connecting with them.

But as I get closer to 30 I feel less interest in connecting with others. The
only exception is when I travel abroad and the surroundings are more
intriguing.

On the other hand: Social media is a great marketing tool. I'm fine if people
use Facebook however they choose. And I also agree with pruning boring content
in favor of subscribing / liking manually.

~~~
amha
Organizing your life to minimize "drama, breakups, [and] regrets" and maximize
"time to get work done" is a good way to end up unhappy and lonely.

Work is important, but your work can't love you back.

~~~
tenpies
> Work is important, but your work can't love you back.

Work is where we spend the majority of our time and I suspect that >50% of
adult friendship originates at work. It is important to think of work as a
social activity and put some effort. Even if you are very much a "work to
live" person, it is worth knowing your co-workers well enough to decide if you
want to pursue them as friends.

~~~
astura
I am awake for approximately 112 hours a week, only 40 is spent at work.
That's only 36% of my time spent at work, that's not even including vacations.
Very far from the majority of my time.

If you consider time spent at work as a "social activity" I would suggest
spending more time working while at work.

Most people do not meet their _good, actual, lasting_ friends at work, usually
work friendships are pretty superficial. Most fade once you aren't required to
see each other every day.

------
jcadam
Facebook has become something I absolutely can't stand. I have an account, but
I very rarely even log in anymore. With ads, 'features stories', etc., the
signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. Just perusing the news feed has become
a chore, not to mention the privacy concerns.

I'd be willing to pay a small subscription fee for a social network that
respects my privacy, doesn't track everything I do, and doesn't constantly
bombard me with crap. Problem is, I'm in the minority. People everywhere claim
to care about privacy but they actually don't :)

------
iregina
Thank you for sharing - just deleted the app off my phone. I hope one day, I
can go without Facebook for a long period of time.

------
lazycouchpotato
I just use Facebook as a public directory, to find people and exchange email
ID's/numbers so that I can message them on, say, WhatsApp.

I find it better than connecting with people though Facebook. Facebook chooses
what I get to see and not see, and I really don't care about the "news" or the
memes from pages my friends and family like.

------
sabmalik
As with a lot of other issues these days, it feels like that people forget
there is usually a middle ground between the extremes. FB like any other tool
can be a good or bad thing.

I spent a bit of time thinking about what I want to get out of Facebook.

\- Social pulse - What are people talking about these days?

\- Interesting/new content/new perspective/taking advantage of the echo
chamber etc

\- Keeping track of the very few physically-distant people that I care about

\- Share some content that I think people would benefit from and wouldn't come
across otherwise

\- Buying/selling rarely in the marketplace

\- Quick diary where I can store stuff that I found interesting

I took a few steps to get what I wanted out of the platform.

\- Follow only the people that post content I might be interested in. It
includes people that somewhat think like me and some that have very different
opinions.

\- Follow some of the content aggregation sites

\- I only post content that is fit for public consumption except when I rarely
share a photo of my kids/family

\- Moved the FB app from the first screen to the last

How it has helped me.

\- Cut down my usage by about 90%

\- I am less concerned about privacy issues when it comes to FB as there isn't
much on there that I wouldn't say out loud in public

\- I kinda get a broad spectrum of how people are feeling about an issue

\- More quality content than I used to get before. One of my favourite
features on FB is "Save post". When I have a few minutes, I find stuff from my
saved list or Pocket to read/watch.

\- I see more photos of the people that I actually like rather than memes and
quotes

I am pretty okay with how social media is involved in my life now.

------
lilfatbitch
Nah the problem with Facebook is not that it makes it easy to socialize, it's
that people aren't using it for that. Instead, all my friends keep sharing
countless shit they find cool and posting their opinions on current events
like anyone asked. Instead of posting about their actual lives. And then
there's the sponsored shit you see on the feed no matter what.

------
indoobidablee
There are different types of social interaction on Facebook between different
generations, it seems. There are those who use it to keep up with other people
and what they're doing, and then there's my generation (the 90s), where
everyone tags each other in memes, and it isn't a very personal website.

Whereas there are points in this article that make sense, I don't really
understand why they're singling out Facebook as toxic. For many, Facebook is
just another feed and not necessarily for social media posts.

------
watwut
These anti Facebook and anti social media articles are so ubiquitous on hn
now, that is starting to feel like a campaign. All too sudden, there is too
many of them.

~~~
cowpig
Anti-facebook articles have been common on HN for years, and it's particularly
ubiquitous right now because of all the powerful negative influence it's
having in politics.

~~~
volgo
> negative influence it's having in politics

Read, negative toward my side of the politics.

~~~
verall
Media sources designed to target confirmation biases, echo chambers, and viral
fake news are a negative influence in all politics.

Why do you think they mean only negative towards their side?

~~~
volgo
> Media sources designed to target confirmation biases, echo chambers, and
> viral fake news

So you mean basically every political campaigns? Not sure how in touch you are
with local politics, but the local political TV ads I see every night have
been like this for years

~~~
verall
You're right, I mean (many) of those too. People have been discussing negative
and positive effects (on all sides of the political spectrum) of television
and TV ads for a long time.

Now we're discussing Facebook, because it just recently gained so much of this
power, and it seems to be uniquely good at causing these negative symptoms.

------
danschumann
Several times a day, I spend 5-15 minutes writing a facebook post, and 9/10
times I don't post them. They all seem like too "look at me", or I think the
person won't think it's funny or clever. It's a giant waste of time, but I
feel better than if I post them(or less bad). Help?

~~~
onboardram
I used to do the same thing over and over, wasting extraordinary amount of
time trying to come up with something memetic and charming that would somehow
make other people think better of me. I have never been able to pin down why,
how or in what way had I wanted them to "think better of me", it was like I
had been made to believe in some mandatory social currency that everyone else
had and I lacked which could only be gained on Facebook. Also, I was a
socially-awkward 17 year old at that time so add in the usual teenage
insecurities and vulnerability too.

The only solution I came up with was to quit cold turkey. Fortunately, I also
moved to a different city at the same time; so, it was easy psychologically to
say good bye to all those _connections_. It's been more than 5 years and I
haven't used Facebook or Twitter since.

It might not be easy for you to do depending on your circumstances and
honestly, some times it does lead to trouble when people use Facebook to plan
or announce things that I get left out of. I did manage to find a few like
minded friends though who don't use it either, so usually it's not that bad.

If you are really serious about this, quitting is the only solution I know of
that works.

------
_pmf_
One can only imagine the damage that is yet to be done by applying machine
learning to junk food design ...

------
seige
Its a bad habit that I am still trying to quit:
[https://medium.com/@lifeinafolder/facebook-is-the-
cigarette-...](https://medium.com/@lifeinafolder/facebook-is-the-cigarette-of-
my-generation-51ed60e4225d)

------
waytogo
Don't delete FB, juat understand what FB is designed for (releasing dopamine)
and learn to deal with software which triggers dopamine release (best is to
avoid them most of the day) and use its best parts: Messenger, birthday
reminders and events.

------
Noos
Why do people pay articles like this any mind? It's just yet another moral
panic over a technology that wound up not doing what the elite wanted. You
could replace the subject with television or video games and the article
wouldn't change all that much.

------
m3kw9
I have this year deleted FB, but not my account. This after noticing trends of
tailoring the exact news that stimulates you the most from what it knows about
you. I’m thinking most of this junk quite useless to me and is eating up a lot
of valuable time.

------
eksemplar
Fast food serves a lot of purposes though. It's not healthy, but it feeds
people, it's cheap and it lets you spend your time on something else.

Facebook really has few reasons to be around anymore outside the fact that it
has a lot of users.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert)

~~~
opportune
One thing conspicuously missing from that article is _why_ there are food
deserts to begin with. People love to decry food deserts but nothing will
actually be done to solve them on a large scale without addressing the causes
as to why they arise.

In my town the cause of the food deserts was the theft rates. There used to be
groceries in the poor parts of town... It simply wasn't economical to keep
them open because they couldn't make money doing so. I'm not blaming poor
people for stealing per se (it's at least partly a symptom of poverty) but
people make food deserts out to be some grand conspiracy on behalf of food
companies when it's really caused by more emergent phenomena that are very
hard to fix

------
agumonkey
> But it’s the visual equivalent of empty calories—delicious but not
> nutritious.

modern life #someta

------
jkestner
Might I suggest a new alternative to Facebook, called "Path"? Path is a simple
and beautiful space to capture and share everyday moments of your life with
5̶0̶ 1̶5̶0̶ any people who matter most to y̶o̶u̶ investors.

------
Double_a_92
What are people even doing on facebook?

My friends at best post holiday photos or food... The rest is just spam,
games, or those stupid quizzes things.

For more personal contact we have telegram and whatsapp groups.

------
merraksh
Note that the only explicit mention of Facebook is in the title.

------
zabil
To like someone, stop reading their feeds.

------
egfx
Hmm, half of the links on nautil.us are currently broken.

~~~
gramakri
Think the site is down

------
lerie82
The title is a perfect metaphor.

------
billconan
what platforms fulfill the need for intellectual socializing? medium.com?

~~~
dredmorbius
Give Metafilter a shot.

------
elysian_eunoia
Says the article with a "Facebook" share button front-and-center at the top of
the page.

------
bryanrasmussen
But I like junk food.

------
eighthnate
The past 3 months, there hasn't been a single day on HN without a post
attacking FB specifically or social media in general by news organizations or
other "journalists/writers". Not only that, we get the same generic "I deleted
facebook and I feel great" comments.

Certainly this isn't the work of the russian trolls. Then who or what is
behind the constant "I hate social media" spam.

~~~
abootstrapper
What if a lot of us actually hate social media.

~~~
eighthnate
Then why are you on hacker news - a social media site?

I've never had a facebook account. Not a fan of facebook or zuck. But doesn't
mean I going to spam social media with "I hate social media" articles.

------
geetfun
I agree that FB can be a big time sink. Every time I consider removing FB from
my phone, I realize how much I learn about _marketing on FB_ from the ads I
see and the groups to which I belong.

If your job involves online marketing, being on Facebook is almost like
research for one's job. And without maintaining a connection to this world,
it's easy to lose touch with what other marketers are doing and rely on blog
articles -- which are, oftentimes, out of date and common knowledge by the
time one comes across them organically.

------
jorgec
In my experience, i tried to join facebook a couple of months ago and: a) It
asked me for a lot of private information. I submit all of them. b) Then i
entered. Facebook suggested me, a list of contacts. All of them are ugly
people. c) And finally, facebook asked me for a real photo. I used a real
photo the first time but i think facebook is a bit faulty.. d) The interface
is a real mess.

Conclusion: i am seasoned with linkedin, where everybody is a "winner", may be
not but they try to do that. In facebook its the opposite, everybody show the
worst.

~~~
codezero
I’m confused about b)

Were you expecting Facebook to only suggest attractive people, if so why?

~~~
morpheuskafka
It's a reasonable assumption, given that their objective is to hook users for
as long as possible.

