

 Why I’m Not On Facebook - rblion
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/six-reasons-why-wired-uks-editor-isnt-on-facebook/

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guynamedloren
I'm just finishing up a 4 year college degree, and have had a Facebook account
since high school. Over the years, I've friended just about everybody I've
ever been acquainted with, even if I never had any real connection with them
in the first place. I figured it would be a good way to keep in touch with all
of these people if I ever wanted to - a great way to be social.

Last weekend, I realized that I don't care about 80% of these people. I would
waste countless hours a week browsing through photos, profiles, and status
updates from people who I've hardly ever known. Not in a creepy stalker way,
just in an aimless zoned-out kind of way. Impulsively, I deleted 600 friends
(leaving me with about 160) without even feeling the slightest bit of guilt or
loss.

For me, Facebook was not a networking tool. Facebook had not provided me with
social experiences that would have otherwise been lost. Facebook did not
connect me with people I would have otherwise not been connected with.
Facebook was wasting countless hours of my time that could have been spent on
more productive and rewarding endeavors.

Facebook has transformed meaningful interactions into emotionless clicks and
keystrokes. I'm really considering getting rid of my account altogether for a
more wholesome social experience.

~~~
rimantas

      For me, Facebook was not a networking tool. Facebook had
      not provided me with social experiences that would have
      otherwise been lost. Facebook did not connect me with
      people I would have otherwise not been connected with.
      Facebook was wasting countless hours of my time that could
      have been spent on more productive and rewarding endeavors.
    

Why would you expect Facebook to do that for you? It just a tool, it enables
but _you_ must create something meaningful with it. I have a paper and a pen,
I don't complain that they don't write a nice poem or a novel for me, I have
to do it myself.

~~~
guynamedloren
Create something meaningful with Facebook? The last time I checked, Facebook
is not a creative outlet. Sure, you can let your collection of virtual friends
know that you despise public transit, and post a few photos - but create
something meaningful? I don't think so.

As for your analogy - a paper is quite literally a blank canvas. You can
create anything that you can imagine, assuming your talents allow. Facebook,
however, is not a blank canvas. Far from it. Facebook confines its users to a
predetermined set of rules for their own benefit ($).

Edit: to elaborate on my last point - when was the last time you saw something
truly incredible created entirely via Facebook? Something absolutely amazing
that just blew your mind. Please let me know. I'm ready to be educated.

~~~
ahlatimer
While Facebook may not be a "creative" outlet, at least not in the common
definition of "creative", it can still be useful. I co-founded of a non-
profit, and we do most of our organization, event planning, and networking
through Facebook. It's been incredibly useful to get the word out, not just
about our organization in general, but also to spread word about specific
events we hold and other organizations we support.

Have we done anything particularly creative using just Facebook? No, not
really, but we have helped gather support for local artists and musicians, who
do do creative things. As rimantas noted, Facebook is just a tool. It _can_ be
a waste of time [1], but that doesn't mean it's _always_ a waste of time.

[1]: A pen and paper can be a waste of time as well. Just look at all the
people doodling during lectures.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
A tangent on doodles. Apparently doodling has been shown to be a mental self-
defence mechanism. By engaging some small part of the mind in a boring
situation it enables you to continue paying attention at the same time rather
than check out completely into a daydream.

Wired article summary with citation of the research paper:
<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/doodlerecall/>

------
johnfn
I think that announcing "I'm not on Facebook" is sort of like announcing "I
don't watch TV." That's nice, but I think you care more than anyone else
you're telling.

I say this tongue in cheek of course because I'm always telling everyone that
I don't use Facebook. It's kind of difficult at times, but really, the people
who I want to talk to will still find ways to talk to me. Better, I find that
not using Facebook frees up a lot of time that I wasn't really aware that I
was using.

~~~
rsaarelm
If I don't watch TV, it doesn't matter much to me if all my friends are. If
I'm not on Facebook and all my friends are, I may miss out a lot of social
interaction I'd otherwise participate in, and which might occur somewhere
elsewhere from Facebook if more people from my social circle weren't on it. So
it looks like it'll benefit me more if I can make other people not do the
thing by announcing I'm not doing it for Facebook than for TV.

~~~
danieldon

        miss out a lot of social interaction
    

<http://i.imgur.com/EpTdz.png> from [http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-
real-life-social-networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-
social-network-v2)

This has been my experience as well.

~~~
whimsy
That was a great slide deck. Thanks for the link.

------
rm-rf
I've stayed away simply because of the inevitable overlap between my personal
and professional lives.

For each online presence, I decide if it will be professional or personal, and
then try to make sure they don't overlap.

Some things are fairly easy to separate: Linkedin professionally, Flickr for
personal photos. Nobody at work knows who I am on Flickr, so I'm free to post
whatever I want w/o affecting me professionally. If I'm job hunting, the
prospective employer will not associate my weird photography style with my
professional qualifications.

FB pretty much assures that I'll end up with friends, family and work mixed
together.

~~~
patrickaljord
> I've stayed away simply because of the inevitable overlap between my
> personal and professional lives.

You can can create simple work/family/etc lists of friends and when you post
something you choose who gets it. In some ways, you do pick a recipient
whenever you send an email, so it's not like you're not used to having to pick
a recipient when posting something on the web. Facebook makes it pretty easy
every time you post a status to choose the list of people, or a black list, or
white list or even pick the people one by one that will be able to read your
post, same as with emails.

~~~
mbreese
Yeah, but it can be pretty easy to click the wrong list or send something to
the wrong list. It is too easy to make a mistake. Plus, what happens if
someone else tags you in the college picture of you doing a keg stand? That's
not something you have any control over and yet something that you may not
want potential employers to see.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Yeah, but it can be pretty easy to click the wrong list or send something to
> the wrong list.

So does that mean you never use email either?

> Plus, what happens if someone else tags you in the college picture of you
> doing a keg stand? That's not something you have any control over and yet
> something that you may not want potential employers to see.

Actually, you can prevent people from tagging you. Also, if someone has a
picture of you doing a keg stand and puts it on the internet, you're pretty
much screwed, facebook or not.

~~~
rm-rf
>So does that mean you never use email either?

No, But it does mean that I use separate e-mail accounts on separate systems
for each social realm. My professional, personal and 'internet' presences are
divided up between my ISP, GMail, Yahoo & Microsoft, as are my on line photos,
blog comments, blogs, address books, etc.

> if someone has a picture of you doing a keg stand

I think that depends on the context. If they post the picture along with my
name and enough of my address/phone number to identify me and associate the
photo with the resume that my prospective employer had, then yes, I'm screwed.
That's why I make deals with my friends -- you don't post pictures of me & I
won't post pictures of your wife. ;-)

My thinking (right or wrong) is that Facebook's social network makes it much
easier to unambiguously associate my professional identity with my personal
identity, especially when combined with another social network like LinkedIn.
If I have overlapping relationships in two systems like that, it's not hard to
figure out that the personal/Facebook 'me' is the same 'me' as the
LinkIn/professional 'me'. And that has a high probability of affecting me
professionally at some time in the future.

------
emeltzer
I deleted my facebook entirely as an experiment, and completely forgot about
it a week later. I used to use it very often, but the moment it was gone, I
didn't miss it in the least.

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rblion
"Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information
age? Was George Orwell right?" - Steve Jobs, referring to IBM in 1984

Facebook is IBM's grandson. I have nothing against Mark, as I do not know him
personally. However, his vision and his history reveal a depraved worldview
where we are just users dependent on his social approval drug called FB.

------
adriand
1) It's boring.

2) It's a waste of time.

~~~
cageface
My experience as well. People don't suddenly become interesting just because
they have an easy forum at hand. I've trimmed most of my internet use down to
directed research and a carefully cultivated list of blogs. I don't feel that
I'm missing much.

------
jdminhbg
I'm not on Facebook because it sucks. Anyone who wants to talk to me has 7
other vectors of communication, none of which spam me with Zynga game updates.

Has anyone who's left Facebook felt that they've actually missed anything?

~~~
davidk0101
Nope, I left it a while back and I'm not missing anything but then again I
have always valued face to face contact above any other and I consider
facebook to be a very poor emulation of a social experience.

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chrismiller
I recently took a month off from Facebook.

I would say that 95% of communication (excluding face to face) between people
I know is conducted over Facebook. In addition to that all events are
organised through Facebook, if I didn't have an account I would be missing
out.

When I meet someone new I don't exchange phone numbers anymore I exchange
Facebook details.

For me at least Facebook is my phone number and email address all rolled into
one. If I didn't have it I would be unreachable for a good percentage of
people I know.

This might not be typical I'm a younger person with a good percentage of my
friends still in college or just leaving to start work.

~~~
younata
Funny. I'm 18, college freshman, and have been facebookless since May. I got
my account when I was 15, so I had two and a half years of addiction to fight.
My experience without a facebook? I get the exact same experience as everybody
else around me, but with 90% less drama.

I like this.

------
harpastum
I agree with a lot of the reasons people give for not using facebook, most
substantially the privacy concerns. However, I think the 'someone might read
your old status messages and judge you for it' [1] idea is a ridiculous way to
live your life.

If people are going to judge you on a random message you wrote five years ago,
that's their fault, not yours. I think Randall Monroe explains it best:
<http://xkcd.com/137/> .

[1] (FTA "A vindictive ex-partner, or a workplace rival, or a health insurer,
or a political opponent, may selectively expose information to your detriment
– powerfully re-framing your identity in a way you would consider dishonest.")

~~~
pak
You know, Zuckerberg gets a lot of flak for the "idiots" comment he made five
years ago. It's MSM material now. You might say it contributes to public
perception of his company, which is a big deal for the value and future
success of his brand. The situation you brush off happens all too often.
(also, see any political campaign, ever.)

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borneogamer
Does anyone remember the early 90's where everybody and his mom's cats have
their own webpage with their profile, blood type, etc available on
angelfire/tripod/geocities? Well, Facebook IS the new
angelfire/tripod/geocities.

Social sites? I don't think so! The only thing you socialize with in FB are
the buttons and the random add friends of friends who you don't know and don't
care and will never actually socialize with. And then you show off to other
people your 1,284 friends list, 95% of whom you most probably will never, ever
socialize with.

And then you cry yourself to sleep at night because Zuckerberg sold your info
to some data mining company.

------
jfb
"[a] strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

------
drp
Privacy zuckering is my main concern and why I deactivated my account. Every
feature Facebook adds requires a visit to the privacy settings to specifically
opt out. It doesn't matter that your preferences were set to yesterday's
version of lockdown -- you never told Facebook it couldn't let Yelp see who
you are, so you need to revisit your privacy settings to opt out of that.

Facebook forces feature adoption by ignoring ethical privacy practices.

------
RyanMcGreal
Given that it's _Wired_ , I'm surprised one of the reasons wasn't, "Facebook
is dead."

------
mereology
It depresses me to see the banality of the the people that I thought were cool
in college. Nobody is cool. What a bummer

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jamii
I avoid the privacy flip-flops by simply making my entire profile public. That
way I'm never tempted into writing something I wouldn't want the world to see.
To be honest I think I would be a better person if I never held an opinion I
wasn't willing to publically defend.

~~~
philwelch
I don't know about that. pg has a whole section in "What You Can't Say" that
boils down to this: if you have any interesting or controversial opinions at
all, don't go around saying them or else your life will be consumed by
controversies completely tangential to what you want your life to be about.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

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FlemishBeeCycle
Facebook still remains a good tool as an "internet yellow pages". I feel no
need to actually use it as intended, but rather maintain a profile with my
email address as a means of contact.

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baddox
Your choice to make your information public is not a privacy issue. Sure, for
the naïve (average) user, networks like facebook should provide explicit and
honest disclaimers, intuitive customization, and conservative defaults. Beyond
that, facebook only has information you choose to make public, and they
shouldn't be expected to not use that information. If a random person on
facebook can look you up and see your favorite music, then I don't consider
any different if advertisers utilize that information (either by scraping it
themselves or by purchasing ads through facebook) to target ads.

Granted, you can make the valid argument that information can be mined without
you explicitly providing it (e.g. friend graphs). That's an iffy ethical
argument that is up for debate: is deriving information about someone from
public information an invasion of that person's privacy? For example, if you
walk out your front door and drive your car away, it's obvious that a neighbor
witnessing that has not invaded your privacy. However, if the neighbor
noticing you leaving and returning on a regular schedule, and learns that a
local strip club has a weekly special event that corresponds to your outings,
has the acquisition of that information (whether or not you're actually going
to the club) constituted an invasion of your privacy?

~~~
VladRussian
The mere learning of the 2 facts, which may have been completely accidental,
didn't consitute invasion of privacy. The act of analysis of the information,
ie. an act of thinking, is the offense here.

DMCA comes to mind here - a law which explicitly (i think first, yet
definitely not last, time in human history) made analysis of information, ie.
an act of thinking, a crime.

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andjones
I don't think dropping Facebook is the right answer. Announcing to everyone
that "I'm leaving Facebook" seems too idealistic and self-righteous.

I have 45 friends on facebook. This number still seems too high to me, but I
realize is very low compared to many of my friends. I share things only with
those that I am closest to. I decline the large majority of friends requests
sent to me. I am comfortable using Facebook for only my closest friends and
family, however others have criticized my use of Facebook in this way.

There are many ways to use Facebook. If you are prepared to accept some
criticism for "not going with the group", I think Facebook can be a very
enjoyable social tool.

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diN0bot
I like that facebook is public expression place (with more details and social
connections for just friends).

I put pictures of adventures and creations on facebook as viewable by anyone
with a facebook account. People who vaguely run into me can go there and find
out more of who I am...sort of like a resume for friendship (tactless). We
also find common interests, conversation starters, etc. I naturally make
friends in person; to me facebook is just one more neat tool in the toolbox
for forging and maintaining social connections and fun in general.

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shortformblog
I have his original list, which I think he switched out:

1) I'm not relevant.

2) I don't want to understand the most popular site on the internet, which my
publication writes about regularly.

3) Despite my position at a publication that relies on technology and social
media as both a promotion tool and main subject, I want to annoy my PR
contacts and writers by forcing them to use other techniques to contact me.

4) It's the hip thing to do for the ahead-of-the-ahead-of-the-curve
trendsetting techies like Jason Calacanis and I want to show that I have
something in common with that guy.

5) I use privacy as a crutch to shield my real reason for not using Facebook
(below).

6) I want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. And as a side
effect of that, I'm choosing to no longer be relevant in my field of
technology.

\--

I do not understand how someone in his position can do his job and recuse
himself of Facebook. You don't have privacy: You're the editor of a major
publication that covers technology.

Got a problem with that? Don't overshare. Make a fan page so people can
worship at your altar, and turn on your privacy settings so nobody else can
see your data. Use your head.

But you edit the U.K. edition of Wired, one of the most popular technology
publications in the world. And you don't use Facebook. It's like wearing a
giant sign around the office that says "I don't deserve my job."

~~~
walkon
I don't really get some of you points.

 _1) I'm not relevant._

You then go on to explain how relevant he is with Wired.

 _3) Despite my position at a publication that relies on technology and social
media as both a promotion tool and main subject, I want to annoy my PR
contacts and writers by forcing them to use other techniques to contact me._

Is FB the primary way to contact people professionally? Apparently it must be
as potential contacts would be 'forced' to use another method. If it
essentially was the only way of contact, wouldn't that prove his points about
privacy and running everything through a questionably motivated company?

 _Got a problem with that (privacy)? Don't overshare. Make a fan page so
people can worship at your altar, and turn on your privacy settings so nobody
else can see your data. Use your head._

Then what's the point? If he's not using it as a way to communicate anything
of significance (your point #3), then why bother? How would a fan page make
him understand and be connected (wired, if you will) to the world?

 _6) I want to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. And as a side
effect of that, I'm choosing to no longer be relevant in my field of
technology._

Or, perhaps he believes that there is nothing technically amazing about FB
other then it gained critical mass to build a huge user base. Are the uses of
ajax and some clean UIs really bleeding edge? In my mind FB is similar to what
YouTube was before it was bought by Google for 1.6B. A nicely implemented site
(nothing technologically jaw-dropping) with a massive user base. Essentially:
decent app, excellent domain name, and superior name recognition.

~~~
shortformblog
Pretty much all of the items (written as a sarcastic response to the article)
were attempts at suggesting he's creating his own obsolescence by ditching
Facebook. In the very first paragraph of the story, he's chided by a Silicon
Valley CEO for not being a part of the site. Clearly people want to have him
as a friend on Facebook. But he's not having it.

My problem is the gap he's creating for his magazine's journalism by doing
this. It's the equivalent of covering the Washington Redskins when you have no
real interest in football. It's like being a food columnist when all you eat
is Taco Bell. It's like being a TV critic when you don't own a TV. It's like
covering a city hall beat but deciding that you hate meetings. As an editor of
Wired, he better get on Facebook, fast, because it's his job. That article
isn't going to convince people to stop using it.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Professional TV critics get the shows sent to them before broadcast so their
stories go live at the same time as the show airs, they could probably live
somewhere remote without traditional cable or broadcast access and do fine.

I'd imagine being an editor of Wired means you don't need to go trawling
Facebook for the latest breaking tech stories either.

~~~
shortformblog
Try playing devil's advocate with the football example because you completely
missed my point, buddy.

The idea isn't that he's using Facebook for the latest tech stories. It
doesn't have anything to do with WHAT he reads on it. The idea is that he's
intentionally making it harder to "get" the piece of culture that he's chosen
to cover in his career.

It has nothing to do with HOW he uses the service; it has everything to do
with blocking oneself off a key piece of popular culture on the Web. It's one
thing if it's an up-and-coming service. It's another when 90+ percent of your
readership uses it and turns to you for information about it.

I do not understand why my original point got downvoted because he's not doing
his job as a journalist by not using one of the key pieces of technology
people expect him to know about. And as readers, that should be of huge
concern.

------
kmfrk
"Why You Shouldn't Be on Facebook" would make for an interesting headline, but
this will obviously deter most readers.

Guess it's better than "Facebook Is Dead", though.

------
karlzt
I don't know what does it feel to be on facebook and never will.

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rick_2047
Sometimes it feels like facebook suffers more from wrong use by people rather
than their privacy policy. Hear me out before you downmod me.

I know their privacy policy kinda sucks (personally I don't have many problems
with it, I just am very careful about what I say on the internet). But there
is another much deeper problem with facebook which everyone tends to ignore.
Partly because we are part and contributors to that problem. Anyone who has a
facebook account these days tends to "friend" any random person who proposes a
"friend request". I dont think that is very appropriate. You are not
comfortable with sharing your information with advertisers who would at least
provide relevant ads, but are comfortable with sharing your whole life with
these random friends whom you do not remember meeting? I see people who have a
friends list of about 300+ people. I don't even have that many numbers on my
phone or email ids in my gmail contacts list. And I bet even they don't. Its
just amazing how we use the number of fb "friends" as a status symbol.

Disclaimer: I use facebook in a very controlled manner, promoting my blog in
my college students, viewing picture which have me or my best friends and
commenting on them and once in a while commenting on somebody's status. My
facebook friends list is 82 people long, that includes 50 people I meet almost
daily (my bus pool, best friends, class mates, we have fun together) and other
25 or so relatives. Rest are just very old friends which I feel guilty
"defriending". So maybe I don't know what it is like having 300+ friends.
Maybe its kinda fun. I am commenting on something which I have never
experienced. So take my comment with a grain of salt.

------
rubashov
Anybody else remember the late 90s when people would send wide distribution
emails about their trips and parties and such? I don't really feel facebook
improved that system so much.

------
Concours
To the author: I'm not on facebook , but I'm writing this article on wired,
hoping you will "like" it and tweet it. 31 like so far from facebook, I'd like
to see an article with the title: 6 reasons why wired is not on facebook or 6
reasons why I don't use the like button my articles. What a funny. As
shortformblog put it, it's like wearing a giant sign around the office that
says "I don't deserve my Job"

