
All of life has been utterly, profoundly changed thanks to Facebook... - thedoctor
http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2011/09/23/all-of-life-has-been-utterly-profoundly-changed-thanks-to-facebooks-new-changes-and-nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-and-all-i-can-do-is-sit-here-and-weep-at-the-beauty-and-magic-that-mark-zuckerber/
======
Tichy
The biggest irony in my opinion is the existance of the "mute" feature on
facebook. I am not a FB user, but apparently, the more you share, the higher
the likelihood of somebody muting you.

So in the end we will share everything with our friends, but our friends will
only pretend to listen.

~~~
majika
Technical solutions, such as the friend muting, can't solve cultural problems
- of which Facebook has aplenty.

MySpace was destroyed by cultural problems. The technology wasn't at fault. If
it was populated with HN-types, we'd see clean typography and beautiful blogs
- not the epileptic-fit-causing profile pages that caused everyone to migrate
to Facebook.

Culture is the difference between MySpace and Tumblr.

Building a community is everything. That's my thesis, at least.

~~~
saturdaysaint
_The technology wasn't at fault._

Myspace could have survived myriad cultural problems on the strength of their
once unparalleled social graph if they could have kept pace with Facebook's
technology. Facebook had many things right - the news feed, valid identities,
speed - that would have required Myspace to essentially start from scratch to
even emulate. Myspace tried, but couldn't pull it off.

So my argument is that Facebook has room to experiment in areas where tastes
may differ (i.e. culture) as long as they have great technology and an
adaptable design. If the timeline/ticker turns out to be completely
overwhelming and they see usage drop, Zuckerberg could practically issue an
apology, flip a switch and basically turn Facebook back to yesterday's
Facebook by Monday. As their experiences with failure (Beacon) and success
(the news feed!) have shown, there's way more upside than downside.

------
jawngee
I understand the article is sarcastic, but let's look at what Facebook
actually is doing for humanity: recording the individual histories of hundreds
of millions of people. From a wide angle view, this is pretty significant.

Imagine if you had the capability of examining your great-great-grandfather's
life at the daily level. How amazing would that be? To localize this, imagine
yourself in your 80's being able to zoom to any day of your life at any point
to relive and review how you thought, what you thought at that particular
moment.

This is what I use Facebook for. Sure, I use it to connect with my friends,
but I also use it so that when I'm knocking on death's door, I'll have
something concrete to look back at that is more stable than my ailing memory
will be. I'll also be able to hand it down to my spawn and their spawn.

I've always considered Facebook a new kind of public utility, just as
revolutionary as the post office used to be.

~~~
aw3c2
In the old days people wrote diaries. That way they could choose whom to share
their story with, they could burn them or they could hand them to their
spawns.

~~~
jawngee
I don't see how that is any different with the privacy settings in Facebook.

And I think it's superior to a diary in that it's not only recording my
thoughts on something, but also the minutiae of my day to day, whom I've
associated with and my interactions with them, etc.

I'm a little surprised at the responses my original post received actually. Am
I the only one that uses Facebook for this purpose?

------
sologoub
Reading this article was very very painful... and honestly, everyone here is
hitting the nail on the head - they are just exposing how much info they are
collecting about people. Facebook is the next Experian/TransUnion/Equifax. In
the past (I worked in corp. security and investigations) you had to go to
ChoicePoint and have law enforcement-like credentials to get a good background
profile and picture of someone else. As more and more of this info is
aggregated by Facebook, investigators will go to them for a much richer
profile that could have ever hoped for.

Onion really has a great parody of this: [http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-
facebook-program-dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-
program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/)

~~~
felipemnoa
My gut is that this is just a trend right now. Eventually people will pull
back once it gets old. And trust me, things get old. Remember chat? Everybody
was crazy about it. There have been many trends that have gotten old too. Just
like in fashion,music,video, trends change.

~~~
hackinthebochs
I'm not sure what you mean here. Chat isn't "old", its just taken for granted
now. What's more likely is that sharing every bit of irrelevant data about
your life will go the way of chat, in that it becomes so commonplace that
isn't not even thought about anymore.

~~~
duck
I think the parent was referring to anonymous chat rooms like MSN. Those don't
really exist now, yet they were extremely popular fifteen years ago.

~~~
felipemnoa
Yes, I was referring to anonymous chat rooms.

------
kennu
I think Facebook's new features are good. They made me realize how much of my
old crap (status updates, comments, etc) Facebook has stored. So I deleted
everything older than one month, using the new Activity Log view and some
Selenium scripts.

~~~
tommi
I'm sure you didn't delete those. You only hid them from the timeline. There's
a huge difference.

I have hid many the old stuff too, but sometimes, especially with timeline
transition, few old items kept popping up and wouldn't hide until fifth or so
times clicking the hide button.

~~~
kennu
I didn't hide them, I clicked "Remove Post", "Remove Comment" etc. for each.
Of course, Facebook probably archives them somewhere anyway.

~~~
pedrolll
I did the same thing. Delete everything. Although, some actions you can only
"hide", like comments on other people's walls and such. At least that's my
understanding.

------
veyron
I'm sorry, but I feel I need to ask: am I alone in not using Facebook since
graduating college? Every time I see an article, every time I watch the news,
I get the impression that Facebook has somehow weaved itself into our daily
lives, yet the only times I think of Facebook is when someone posts an article
like this on HN (and yes I'm aware the article is sarcastic, but there are
many more articles which are serious)

~~~
calebmpeterson
I'm in that same boat...

~~~
veyron
I figure its worth asking:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3034871>

------
Astrohacker
Funny. I just disabled my account this week and don't have plans to go back.
Facebook never made much of an impact on my life and I've finally decided the
loss of privacy is no longer worth staying on.

Edit: Now after having read the post I realize it is sarcastic. So maybe I'm
not so different after all.

~~~
suivix
I tried this too, but got pulled back from all the websites and apps that need
Facebook logins.

~~~
darksaga
Interesting. I have a fake Facebook account, but I never like or recommend
anything using any of the Facebook tools on every website these days. I've bee
using the same account for years and all the information is completely
inaccurate.

I'm wondering how much longer I can go before I get cut off.

------
sandroyong
...more so for the people who collect user's personal data. Funny, I haven't
had that many telemarkerters since FB. Yes, we are all that much more
connected (whatever that means; I don't use FB at all so I wouldn't know), but
there must be a better way than to dump our personal lives into servers 'out
there'. I hope 'profoundly changed' means that it has taught some of us to
think twice before we give out our personal data. Startups around FB have
benefited from its existence, so I should balance my comments with some
positives. A debatable issue that will surely continue...

~~~
technoslut
I have no problem with Facebook or how they monetize their business but I know
the average user aren't aware of it and they should be.

What I also I hope is that algorithms get better so it can know how a photo,
video or post should be shared so the user won't have to think about it.

------
scrame
Prediction: Lyons will soon start a "Fake Mark" account.

------
pumainmotion
The best way to deal with this new 'release' is to just ignore it. Can't
believe the amount of attention this has garnered. We all need to wake up.

------
dasil003
Is this funny? Seems a bit pointless to me, but maybe no more so than any of
the other schlock people are writing about FB these days.

~~~
majika
Yes, it is. The blog seems to be The Onion of the tech world.

~~~
technoslut
You are discrediting The Onion. They have eerily posted articles that have
later come to fruition.

------
flarg
"Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life."

No thanks.

------
njharman
Even though sarcastic and well-played this is just more hype. It should not be
encouraged.

------
napierzaza
If this keeps happening, you'll start asking someone about their early life
and they'll just suggest you add them on Facebook and read about it yourself.

I had a similar experience talking to a friend who had just started blogging.
We hit a discussion point he had apparently already covered and if I just read
it instead of talking...

Facebook should just be there to remind you of people's birthdays, but it
doesn't really do that very well either.

------
jcfrei
is this guy tripping or what? facebook extended a few features (eg. not just
liking, but reading and eating and whatever) and introduced timeline, which is
gonna be quite creepy for all those very active facebookers out there.
seriously, what's the big deal?

~~~
translocation
If I'm not mistaken, the linked article employs the rhetorical device known as
sarcasm.

The point being that Timeline is not, in fact, a world-changing feature.

~~~
jcfrei
dang, you're right

------
itswindy
"All of life has been utterly, profoundly changed thanks to Facebook..."

Ummmm...not mine. I use it sometimes but total posts under a dozen. Google
knows way more than FB about me but that's changing little by little.

