
Ask HN: Anybody else quitting Facebook over privacy concerns? - adammichaelc
It just doesn't seem like Zuckerberg is going to let up until all of our personal info, connections, interests, etc. are being sold to the highest bidder. So today, I quit. It's really not that bad. Just 2 clicks, and then 14 days without a login attempt. http://bit.ly/chsPFo I'm curious if anybody else on HN has quit and why.
======
dfranke
I was one of Facebook's earlier adopters, back when it was still restricted to
a handful of universities. I found it to be a useful tool for getting to know
classmates. Then the feature creep started and it turned into a product that I
have no use for, so I left. I never at any point gave a damn what their
privacy policy was, because it would never have crossed my mind to post
something there if I didn't want it to be public.

~~~
pak
The problem with Facebook was never what you posted about yourself. The more
nefarious thing was that _other people_ , in theory your friends but more like
people you know for whatever reason, could post information that was linked
directly to your tangibly real identity.

In the era of the freeform Wall this was pretty silly stuff, but by the time
it expanded to picture tagging and the news feed it started to get quite a bit
out of your control. You could opt out of some of these things, but doing so
generally made you seem a little asocial.

The real diabolical thing about Facebook was that it combined general social
anxiety with on-by-default feature rollouts to coerce its userbase into
feeding more and more personal info to the datamine. Expect it to only get
worse as the userbase grows to epic proportions... they are sitting on a
Scientology-scale vault containing the personal details of people's lives.

~~~
dfranke
I forget whether picture tagging came along before or after I left, though I
know I've seen the feature. It was probably some time in the grey area between
when I stopped using it regularly and when I actually deactivated my account.
Anyway, I see your point about how you could easily get creeped out about
Facebook making it so easy to datamine that stuff. It doesn't bother me
personally because I just take the McNealyesque view that any information that
I don't make a deliberate effort to control access to is already public. But
that's just because I'm a security guy and my brain is correspondingly warped;
I make no claim that this mindset is normal or even healthy.

------
brandonkm
I'm deleting my account after I relay to all the friends I want to keep in
touch with where else they can reach me at. Its a personal decision and never
before have I been so personally offended by any one company's vision of what
the internet should be. I disagree with the notion of a "social by default"
web so much that I can no longer entertain being part of Facebook.

There's an educational component to this recent bit of news as well. People by
and large don't care enough to really cause the critical mass exodus that
would make Facebook backtrack on these announcements. I think this may largely
be because people don't know anything about the origins of the internet or
even how it works on a basic level. It makes me think that knowing these
things should be taught in schools in some capacity. I would assert that if
people knew more about the internet then they could form more of an opinion
when a company tries to hijack it it and change the paradigm.

No one company can or should ever be allowed to change what the "default" of
the web is.

~~~
blaix
You have every right to pull out of Facebook if you disagree with what they're
doing, but thinking it has to conform to what your vision of what the web's
"basic paradigm" is is just silly. Blogging and commenting changed things
before this social stuff took it further. The web is always changing.

Saying people need to learn about the origins of the web before they can use
it is arrogant and I don't see how it could affect how anyone views what's
happening with this Facebook stuff.

Regardless though, "social by default" is rhetoric. When you launch a site
Facebook isn't going to be able to hijack it and start inserting social
features without your permission.

In general, I think the concerns are overblown. Facebook is basically the
Twitter that my family uses, and that's why I use it.

------
arimat
Yes.

Facebook has progressively and consistently been trying to "slip under the
radar" with privacy time and time again. This is not a one time thing, it's a
habit and a consistent assault on users. They've never suggested they've ever
"gotten" privacy and their flawed assumption that just because i'm on a social
network means I want to share everything with everyone is pretty asinine.

I've spent a long time messing with privacy settings and groups and i've never
really gotten the results that I wanted. Social networks badly need to start
getting the clue that people don't want to give up control over their
information. All Facebook needed to do was look at the stories of people who
got fired or never hired based on what was on their Facebook to learn this
lesson, but they've proven they don't want to do it.

Facebook has gone way off the rails and continues to go off the rails. One
wonders whether anyone there is possessed of clue.

------
webwright
Er, nope. This doesn't concern or phase me in the least. Assuming I don't
say/do anything stupid on Facebook, can someone explain to me why I should be
worried about this? I just don't get the outrage. I'm happy to have the entire
world know everything I post on Facebook.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I may be out of the prime facebook demographic by several years but even I
understand the significance of this for a huge number of facebook users. A lot
of people view facebook as something in the same genre of livejournal or
blogger, a tool that allows you to keep in touch with friends but that is
nevertheless still fairly public and limited. However, a huge number of people
have taken facebook far more into their private lives. They use it as a
replacement for email, for example. These people's entire digital lives are in
facebook. Every sordid detail of their personal relationships. Every little
bit of letting off steam about coworkers and bosses. Every piece of personal
information from their home address and phone number to the sex toys they
bought last week. For these people facebook's privacy settings are critically
important.

To put yourself in their shoes imagine if your email provider or phone company
made an announcement that they were making a change to their privacy settings.
If you thought that there was a serious chance of your email, text messages,
or phone conversations accidentally becoming public because you failed to tick
the right checkbox somewhere you might demonstrate just the slightest bit of
consternation at that prospect.

For myself I've been lucky since I hardly use facebook, and then only
grudgingly (more out of a hatred for the UI than anything else), but for many
of it's heaviest users facebook does not appear to be operating in, let alone
even considering, their best interests.

------
SkyMarshal
I tainted my Facebook data and bailed long ago. Facebook just ain't right.
([http://www.freeinfidel.com/2007/12/08/taint-the-data-how-
to-...](http://www.freeinfidel.com/2007/12/08/taint-the-data-how-to-quit-
facebook-the-evil-way/))

Trusting Facebook with the ability to track you across the entire Internet is
like trusting a Wall Street investment bank with your money.

In both cases, they're the G, you're the mark, no matter how sweet the sales
pitch. They wouldn't be selling you if the deal wasn't better for them.

------
datums
Thinking about it. I don't want to have to manage my privacy setting every
time FB decides that this small component of the app will be exposed to non
friends on these sites. It starts becoming something you worry about and is a
huge turn off. 2006 member

------
seven
Privacy concerns where the reason why I never joined Facebook in the first
place. But still they do know me. As some people typed my email address into
it, to request my friendship...

I am part of one social network that is more about professional relationships.
As I got many contracts through this network, I am a happy paying customer and
the benefits outweight the privacy problems.

Joining a social network that is mostly about private stuff is a no go for me.
I just do not see a benefit in putting that kind of information into other
peoples hands. I do not want my future customers to know that I am friend with
'Beer-Bong-Bob'. But as I just turned 30, I will listen to PG-13 and keep my
mouth shut now. :)

------
duck
Can't you just disable it? Maybe I'm missing something though.
[http://www.simplehelp.net/2010/04/22/how-to-reclaim-your-
pri...](http://www.simplehelp.net/2010/04/22/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-by-
disabling-facebooks-open-graph/)

I mainly use Facebook to keep updated on family and close friends, and don't
use anything besides status updates and some photos/videos. I don't see myself
changing how I use it based on these latest changes.

Like Google, Facebook and privacy all depend on _how_ you use it, not the tool
itself. Also, like anything other 3rd party app, I don't rely on it and would
be happy to walk away from it at any point if need be. I currently doing that
with Google search using duck duck go.

~~~
adammichaelc
My big beef is that it becomes a hassle to have to go in and opt-out every
time Zuckerberg decides to opt me in to some new information-sharing service
that I don't want to be a part of. So yes, you can disable it, but the trend
seems to be to make it a convoluted process to disable these things, followed
by new "features" in a few months that force me to jump through a few more
hoops. It's just become more of a headache than it's worth.

------
groaner
Nope. I saw this coming on day one and never joined.

How else could you have expected Facebook to make money?

------
CulturalNgineer
The individual in a tribe of hunter-gatherers has a very different concept of
privacy. In his/her world everyone pretty much knows everyone else's
'business'.

The whole concept of privacy is relatively new to humanity. This doesn't mean
its not important. Its actually an emergent property of a scaled civilization.

Its an unavoidable situation there but, of course, in that case 'everyone' is
a fairly small number.

The Internet is revolutionizing privacy and proximity for the FIRST time since
the rise of organized agriculture.

This isn't going to be an easy transition and will require revisions in law,
credit-creation and finance, governance and especially cultural norms.

I don't know how it will turn out but I suspect it will be a deal 'maker or
breaker' for humanity's future development and the role and rights of the
individual.

It's a true evolutionary landscape and its design whether arising by accident
or intent will determine the nature of our future evolution.

How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!)
[http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-would-
hunte...](http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-would-hunter-
gatherers-run-world.html)

The Problem in Scaling Altruism: Where's the Intelligent Life?
[http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/04/problem-in-
scal...](http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/04/problem-in-scaling-
altruism-wheres.html)

On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money
[http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-social-
energ...](http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-social-energy-
enterprise-expanding.html)

Unhindered Speech and Association must be maintained as inherent qualities of
this developing landscape. And the information inherent in this speech and
association, if it is to have ownership at all...

Must be owned by the Commons!

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account, I believe is an
essential element necessary as part of this transition.

But I'm an anthropologist and not a computer whiz just trying to understand
this new landscape and provide a suggestion or two...

~~~
chancho
Someone else (in some other similar thread that I've forgotten) pointed out
the similarity to "the olden days" when everybody knew everybody else's
business.

To which the reply was: Yeah, but you knew exactly _who_ knew your business.
This new brand of everybody-knows-everybody's-business is entirely different
because it's asymmetrical: everybody knows everything about me but I don't
know shit about "them", who they are, where they are, how many of them there
are, etc...

------
there
Anybody else never join Facebook over privacy concerns?

~~~
gradschool
I never have despite frequent requests, and not all automatically generated
(at least by conventional criteria). I'm beginning to worry about whether
people get that not joining Facebook could be a conscious choice rather than a
mere oversight.

------
mdolon
A lot of people seem to share the same opinion about quitting Facebook but are
hesitant because there aren't many better alternatives. Does this mean there's
a market for a secure, more private social network? Maybe one where everything
is completely private, unless you decide to make it public to other members.

If people want/need something like that it sounds like a fun weekend (or two)
project.

~~~
loup-vaillant
If you want an alternative that will never disrespect privacy, you will need
to make it distributed. This is because the only way to control your data is
to lock it up on your machine, or encrypt it.

I wonder if there are standards (protocols) related to distributed "social
network".

~~~
drewp
<http://www.foaf-project.org/> is one of the main standards.
<http://code.google.com/p/xoperator/> is a bit weird, but I think has some of
the right ideas of the distributed SN.

------
shadowsun7
I joined Facebook this year for a class in Facebook app development. I never
really wanted to join the network - like some of the posters here, I saw
something like this coming and told myself it wasn't worth the investment to
join Facebook.

After four months of using it, I've come to several conclusions.

1) Facebook is a huge timesuck. Time I used to spend reading on the Internet,
or programming I now spent watching stupid videos on Facebook itself. What
Facebook needs is a noprocras feature (but even then - the content isn't worth
the time).

2) Related to point 1: I began to think that what Facebook really does is to
use my need for connection to keep me returning to the site. And I didn't like
that. It felt as if ... well it feels as if they're trying to use my friends
for their benefit.

3) Superficial communication != valuable communication. There is no
centralized discussion on FB, and your profile page tends to be this highly
decentralized echo chamber. How many people, if ever, argue against your (bad)
ideas on your very own profile page?

4) Privacy has always been and will always be an issue on a social site this
big. It's too easy to mess things up.

And so, after four months: I'm quitting.

------
davidmurphy
Slightly half-considering it for the first time ever.

------
weixiyen
I tried to quit last year and then my wife started an argument with me,
rationalizing that people would think she's single if I quit. I'm still on
Facebook, it's still completely useless, and and I still want to quit. However
I need some ammo if I'm going to approach this subject with her again.

~~~
Aron
Let her create a fake husband account.

------
jrockway
I stopped using Facebook because it's useless. If I want to talk to my
friends, I just msg them on IRC. Why bother with ads and "identity
verification"!?

~~~
kmano8
This is mildly sensationalist. Useless to you != useless to others. As an
aside, I doubt most of my non-engineering friends know what IRC is (ignoring
that IRC and facebook are two completely different platforms with different
use cases).

------
ErrantX
Nah, I made a concious decision to open up my Facebook account "publicly"
about 18 months ago. So in my mind it is just like my public facing blog (with
a handy added address book).

Once you have it in your mind like that it is easy to remember not to post
private stuff in there.

~~~
revorad
I also thought of doing that but I don't know if it's a good idea. Because
it's not just up to you to not post private stuff. What about the private
stuff your friends post about you on your wall?

On the other hand, limiting my profile also has only limited privacy benefits
because my friends and family don't understand and can't be bothered to tweak
fifty different checkboxes to get their privacy settings right. So anything I
say or do on their Facebook pages is out in the open.

I'm wondering if it's even worth thinking about so much. Ugh.

~~~
ErrantX
About the only thing I do really limit is the privacy of things friends post
on my wall etc.

In terms of other stuff they do (controlled by their privacy settings) I think
you just have to be aware of what's going on. I've de-tagged a few photo's
etc.

~~~
revorad
Oh I remember de-tagging photos once. It made me laugh when I realised
Facebook was making me do _work_ and there was no end to this chore!!!

------
marilyn
I'm definitely tempted to quit. I don't like the way Facebook is going for
sure, nor do I like the idea of one company, a foreign one at that (I'm
Canadian), having so much control and power over my digital identity. Though I
fear I may be too addicted to quit.

------
keefe
I was on facebook for a while. One day, I realized I was publicly linked to my
boss, my colleague, all my x's and everyone I went to high school with. The
next day, I deleted my account. I was never particularly interested in it in
the first place.

------
jorgecastillo
I signed once, I checked the settings and had a quick glance but didn't add
people. After that I canceled my account and whit recent developments I think
I will never again make a FB account.

If something like XMPP was made for social networking it would be awesome and
if data portability was added it would be even better.

<will probably never happen>

Lots of independent social networks that are compatible with each other so
that you only have to be a member of one but can still interact with everyone
you wish to and can easily switch to another network.

<will probably never happen>

This open source project might be (or not) a good start.

<http://elgg.org/>

~~~
kwamenum86
I'd go win might not. Last time I checked elgg does not scale well and the
code is really REALLY awful as in not optimized and not conducive to
customization. It is kind of a toy IMO

------
bradgessler
I've always viewed Facebook as a self-updating address book. I never got into
all the other crap it offered and I loathed at their app platform when it was
released years ago.

------
ben1040
I put my account in the delete queue a few days ago. I shouldn't have to keep
an eye on HN and Valley blogs to find out that they've tweaked privacy
settings _again_ and more of my information is "public."

Getting out is a whole lot easier than I thought. I had as friends on Facebook
a lot of former high school and university classmates, as well as coworkers
from prior jobs. Part of me was worried I'd lose touch with them, but then it
dawned on me that the extent of our interactions was mashing "like" buttons on
each other's posts -- for example, if one of them were in town, I probably
wouldn't bother to catch up with them for a beer.

The people I actually care about, well, I can email, call them, or even tap
them on the shoulder and say "Hey." Having to do that also makes me think
twice about what I'm sending, and to only share with people the things that
actually matter. Facebook's "news feed" makes it way too easy to share things
that probably should be left unsaid.

And man, my productivity has skyrocketed since I don't feel compelled every
hour to check my Facebook feed. The last couple days I've gotten lots more
work done thanks to cutting out this huge distraction.

------
arihant
Not deleted account, nor planning to. Just clicking logout button does it.
Now, I just login once every 2 days to interact, also saves time.

------
DarwinLann
I quit Facebook late last year. I have no patience for the games they are
playing.

Sadly, this seems to be the way of Web 2.0 sites: build an audience and ruin
it by trying to make money with it. I've seen it with Myspace, Flickr,
Twitter, Delicious, and Facebook. I really like Tumblr but I would bet that
the same thing happening with them at some point in the future.

------
loup-vaillant
Not sure this counts, but I quit _Gmail_ over privacy concerns. My mail and my
web site are currently hosted on a remote virtual machine on which I am root.
But this is not enough. I eventually plan to use a _real_ personal server, one
that will be locked behind _my_ walls.

Of course, I won't ever use Facebook.

------
pkulak
I'd like to, but everyone I know (almost literally) uses it. The feed really
is a great feature. If I could get everyone I know to move over to Buzz or
anything else with The Feed that isn't evil, that would be nice, but it's not
going to happen. Facebook owns me.

------
arihant
Shutting down FB account might be a solution to privacy issues, which can be
easily solved by starting to use FB from something like TweetDeck. That's not
big of a deal.

But, the mere fact that people are feeling "friction" from shutting accounts
leads to a more profound problem here - portability of personal data on the
cloud. For a 'social' web to happen in reality and for 'everything to move on
cloud' to happen anywhere out of Web 2.0 conferences, this feature is
required.

You can't shift 'everything on cloud' when 'everything' is tied to one
privately held entity. This goes for every 'social' services provider out
there. If I can change my cellphone provider, why not my social network
provider?

------
Amanjeev
I want to quit but then where and how else can I keep in touch with the
contacts on FB?

~~~
petercooper
I found.. you don't. But that's not such a bad thing, because if you're
associating with people who you wouldn't otherwise keep in touch with except
for some stupid Web site, are they people worth keeping around?

~~~
Amanjeev
I am not associating. Many of these are contacts from my school, college,
internships. No all of them are on lickedin or such websites. It seems FB is
ubiquitous....

You have a point though. Some of them ARE stupid.

------
braindead_in
I quit around one and half years ago. I wasn't really drawing any value out of
it.

------
thecombjelly
I started using it as soon as it was opened to high schools. I deleted my
account around a year ago. I quit because of privacy concerns but also because
it was a time sink, at it had really lost it's focus.

------
aj
I am. I'm done. Tried suicidemachine.org but that service seems to be spotty.
Did not work twice and now apparently I don't have slots.

Will have to do it manually.. But I am going to do it.

------
ihodes
Yes, I really am. The only use I will miss if being able to contact a targeted
group of people when I make my _own_ ads. Which is a sick reason to not want
to leave.

But I feel as though my rights as a user of their service have been violated
not just this time, but many more (the frequent privacy policy changes,
Beacon, now Connect etc etc.)

It's bullshit.

(Plus keeping in touch with people is easier on Facebook, I suppose. And it's
a sort of asynchronous chat toy as well, which is fun.)

------
Kilimanjaro
It is not what you post, it is what they post about you.

A friend of mine decided to give facebook a try and he was received with a
warm welcome of "Bring the cocaine, snuffy is here finally!"

Closer to home, a cousin went to a bachelorette party and posted pictures of
her and everybody doing their stuff, you know, sucking fake cocks and stuff.
Totally inappropriate for the world to know, but they thought that was just
funny.

See? you can't control what they post about you.

------
HowardRoark
I deleted my Facebook account yesterday. I quit Google search 2 years ago.
With Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Github and Bing, I don't miss Google search
much.

~~~
Calamitous
Since you dumped google, I'm curious if you've tried/have an opinion on
DuckDuckGo?

------
ElbertF
I canceled my account this morning. I never had any information on there that
I wanted to be completely private but I don't like where Facebook is going.

------
raintrees
I just went back into my profile and deleted all of my personal/bio info, and
made sure my settings were as tight as I could make them.

Two older acquaintances were still able to find me, so success.

I should also point out that I use it mostly to keep up on family reunions,
and classmates, etc. and frequent the site maybe twice a month?

And I have always considered it public, so I have posted accordingly. And
chided my "friends" to do the same.

------
ritonlajoie
Do you know what was the name of this project which lets you, with a firefox
extension, post your facebook messages using PGP or something similar ? I
can't find it again, still there was some buzz about that some months ago..

edit : this software was aimed at creating short life messages. After some
time the data was deleted from the net.. It was using some P2P technology

------
retube
I just spent 30 minutes going through all my privacy settings and switching
everything to "Friends only". It was time consuming, and given the number of
config pages, I'm sure I've missed stuff. And there's still stuff visible on
my profile.

I'm just so pleased I signed up with an alias. Only my actual friends know
it's me.

------
endtime
Nope. I've been a member since 2004, when they opened it up to my school just
before my freshman year. I just keep in mind that Facebook isn't private and I
can't rely on anything I put on it to be private. But even under the
stipulation that everything I put on Facebook is public, it's useful to me.

------
kimfuh
It wasn't a privacy concern for me. It was boredom. FB slowly became boring. I
joined around the time when the poke was invented and FB was something new.
Every time i logged in, i'd find something interesting to do. Doesn't feel
like that anymore. It feels stale. There's no app for that.

------
stcredzero
Thinking about it.

I think Facebook has peaked. It's bloated, ripe, and everything that can be
extracted from it is being extracted.

(I may be wrong, and this is only a local maxima. That's also a disturbing
thought.)

~~~
sandipc
as much as I wish that were true, it seems like fb is still growing at a
ridiculous rate (at least from what zuckerberg mentioned at f8)

------
adammichaelc
Clickable link to delete your account. Deleting is different from
deactivating; deactivating keeps all your data there. Deletion is _supposedly_
permanent. <http://bit.ly/chsPFo>

~~~
dmoney
Real URL:
[http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_ac...](http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account)

------
aneth
Privacy is dead, and I (and most people) have very little to hide. What I do
have to hide can be under pseudonyms.

Besides, I think Fb is doing a reasonable job allowing people to control their
privacy settings. Most people don't mind being out in the sunlight.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
There are a few issues with the "I have very little to hide" attitude. One
problem is that the information you provide may not be what you want to hide,
but the information that could be inferred from it may be problematic for you.

For instance, what if some financial institution computes a credit score based
on the profiles of the people you are connected with and makes you pay more
for a loan because you have some friends with a bad credit rating?

What if health insurance providers sift through your data to find out about
your lifestyle and adjust rates accordingly?

What if a potential employer or their HR service provider computes some kind
of loyalty/reliability/risk score based on lifestyle data you provide?

What if none of that is possible based on your current facebook data but when
facebook gets acquired in the future their datasets are combined with other
data about you?

All of the conclusions drawn from such analyses may be completely wrong. But
they are nonetheless information about you and they may have an effect on your
life. Was that the kind of information you were thinking of when you said "I
have very little to hide"?

~~~
aneth
I don't see how you would have an expectation of that data being private when
you put it on facebook. The whole point of facebook is to publish your
identity, and you are a fool if you think somehow what you post to your
friends will never get around.

And how does what happens to your data after an acquisition have anything to
do with their current privacy policies? If that's you worry, there is nothing
they could do - it's your choice to put data there.

~~~
loup-vaillant
He wasn't talking about Facebook at all. He merely questioned the "I have
little to hide" line of thinking. Also, if you sincerely think that privacy is
dead, I suggest you see this video:
[http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-
clou...](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/01/freedom-cloud-
software-freedom-privacy-and-securit/) Pay particular attention to the points
you may disagree with, and why.

------
apphacker
I'm not going to quit, I'm connected to my family on there. I just don't post
stuff there, except for some family pictures and videos, which I can do from
iPhoto. I post everything to my tumblr blog which reposts it on Facebook and
Twitter so I never have to log in to FB unless someone comments. Also I work
on apps that I integrate into Facebook so I'll use it for that.

------
PG-13
I'd like to know the ages of the people "quitting" Facebook and how much you
actually used it in the first place. Most of Hacker News is too old to
actually use Facebook the way young people use it. You're just there so you
can feel as though you're in tune with tech trends or whatever. You have never
really used Facebook, which is why almost all the comments on here about
Facebook are so bad. You sound like old people screaming at kids to get off
the yard. If you were a real Facebook user (hundreds of photos documenting
years of your life), you wouldn't be able to just quit like that over
something like this. I seriously don't understand why anybody over 30 even
bothers to write things about Facebook, something that isn't meant for them,
and something they clearly don't understand.

Old wantrepreneurs on here are so bitter about Facebook's success. I remember
someone giving career advice actually recommending Google over Facebook. You
have to be completely out of touch to even think such a thing. Google is
yesterday's news. They are a bloated company filled with talentless
individuals, people who would kill for the chance to have the skills necessary
to work for Facebook, but their brains just aren't good enough

If you're over 30, please stop posting your "opinion" on Facebook. Your
opinion on Facebook is about as insightful as an 80-yr-old's opinion about the
internet. Instead, you guys should be begging the real users of Facebook, i.e.
people who actually understand social media, to explain these things to you so
that one day, with significant effort and training, you might be able to
understand it.

~~~
Aetius
Don't worry about being downvoted with a throwaway account. The people
downvoting are most likely over 30, paranoid as fuck, and have no hand in
creating today's internet. These are the same people that gave me -4 for
saying "Yahoo is a rotting carcass on the landscape of the web". I get a kick
out of these people, and offending them, because they are _sooooo_ out of
touch.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Be careful with sarcasm, this is often taken literally. (You _are_ being
sarcastic, right?)

------
raquo
In the internet only Facebook can quit you. All your data are belong to Zuck.

