
Goodbye Facebook. - jackyyappp
http://techsavvybutterfly.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/goodbye-facebook/
======
tatsuke95
Facebook will struggle to make the next leap (IMHO, of course) because there's
a disconnect between how users want to use it, and how Facebook wants/needs
you to use it.

Outside of the sub-group of individuals who thrive on sharing every aspect of
their life, most people want Facebook to be a fancy email. There's all your
friends; you can talk with them and literally see what they're up to . And to
be honest, the platform is great for that.

Facebook, on the other hand, needs you to be an information sharing and data
providing machine, talking about brands and products, all while doing whatever
they can to entice (or trick) you into putting your information in the public
domain. They want to you be connected with _everyone_. People are learning
that's a lot of work.

The problem is that the more Facebook pushes the latter, the worse the former
-- the user experience -- _has_ to get. Nobody wants to stare at ads and feel
like they're being "watched" (by both Facebook and other connections) while
they "engage" with friends. As the author discovered...it's odd.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
This is probably a generational thing, but I don't care about being watched.
If I am, that information doesn't go on Facebook, in an email, in a text, and
perhaps even not in a phone call.

Facebook is getting impersonal without a competent list/circles system. I find
myself texting or messaging content to people more than posting it on my wall
because I want to be selective about who views it.

Sometimes these are stories about the cute girl I talked to at Starbucks or a
service I'm loving. Sometimes it's a personal story with little branding
value. But I naturally have both types of conversations and so don't see the
mutual exclusivity between encouraging conversation and getting data.

Similarly, the problem with friending everyone goes away with a decent
lists/circles concept - I add a lot more people on Google+ (granted, I don't
post _anything_ there. But I'd like to).

~~~
brk
I'm seeing similar things on Facebook. A group of my friends is in a Facebook
group that was originally intended for a business purpose. It is still used
for that, but we also frequently post things there that we want to share to a
small audience and not broadcast to all Facebook contacts.

------
peterwwillis
For all of you wondering _"Can I really give up Facebook?"_ the answer is an
emphatic "Of course, stupid." You got along fine before it existed and you'll
forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes.

The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an
event. They knew I had abandoned Facebook and wanted to make sure I was
included. I felt slightly honored that they would go "out of their way" to
include me, and it was much more meaningful than the average Facebook invite-
all event listing.

Have you ever met someone you hadn't seen in a while, and they ask you what
you've been doing, and you get a plethora of different reactions as you
explain the ups and downs of your recent adventures? You don't get that if
they're on Facebook. Human interaction is based on communication, and Facebook
is not communication. It's the Reader's Digest version of The Truman Show.

Maybe I am a luddite. But what i'm fighting against is the replacement of
emotion and social interaction with technology. Maybe someday soon, Google
Glass will become so ubiquitous that we'll all watch snippets of other
people's lives instead of status updates, and we'll never have to live life on
our own again; we'll just live through someone else.

~~~
Karunamon
>the answer is an emphatic "Of course, _stupid_."

Ignoring your patronizing, insulting tone for a bit, somehow I doubt it's that
easy for most. If you're addicted to something (and I mean really, truly
addicted), and it has negative consequences on your life, the answer is always
"Well just stop it doing it, then". However, people do not work that way, and
it's at the very least naive to assume it's that simple.

>You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it _once you're
not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes._

Applies to Twitter, email, SMS, basically any communication method ever. The
fact that becoming addicted to a communication medium can have a negative
impact on your life is not a valid argument against said communication medium,
because it applies to all of them.

>Facebook is not communication.

What would you call it then!? It's a platform where you share and talk with
friends. How is that not communication?

>replacement of emotion and social interaction with technology.

If you've never been emotionally impacted by a social interaction which did
not occur with the person standing right next to you (i.e. via technology), I
daresay you are either leading us on, or are not much of a communicator to
begin with.

~~~
peterwwillis
Any bit of information can make an emotional impact, if it's meaningful to
you. Maybe you learned that your whole family burned alive via morse code.
Doesn't really matter how you got the information, you got it. And you'll
probably have an emotional response. That isn't what i'm talking about at all.

I said _replacement_ of _emotion and social interaction_ with _technology_.
It's the removal of the human element that troubles me. When people stop
reaching out to one another, and instead reach out to a plastic widget. When
instead of sharing, laughing, and crying together, we take, laugh, and cry in
a room, alone, our thumbs and index fingers hurriedly punching out comments on
data streams, missing vital clues and skipping over the common human
courtesies we learn and use in the course of physical interaction. Facebook is
stripping away our humanity.

The simplest example is the occasional comment-box-flame-war you'll see when
someone posts something about race, religion, sex, politics, etc. Total
strangers haranguing your friends because they decided your status update's
comment box was a nice place to have a pointless argument. It's made worse by
the vagueries of the internet and the invincibility of the internet.

Email and text don't work the same way, and aren't a threat to human
interaction in the way Facebook is. Twitter is similar, though, which is why I
also deleted Twitter.

~~~
Karunamon
>When instead of sharing, laughing, and crying together, we take, laugh, and
cry in a room, alone, our thumbs and index fingers hurriedly typing out
replies to communication, missing vital clues and skipping over the common
human courtesies we learn and use in the course of physical interaction.

You say "human courtesies", I (and others) say impediments to effective
communication. Think of the average phone call. Think of how much of that is
completely needless and only dictated by tradition as opposed to any real
informational, emotional, communicative, or any other value.

And if you can't look past the medium to see the person on the other side,
there's not a whole lot I can say on that. My BF on the phone vs Skype vs
Facebook vs Twitter. It's all the same person, all their communique are
special to me, medium regardless. In fact the textual ones have a benefit - I
can easily retrieve those later.

Who really uses Facebook to the exclusion of meeting in person?

>Facebook is stripping away our humanity.

Such hyperbole.

>the negative consequences ("lack of pictures and status updates") are not
nearly as broad as addiction to most other things in life.

You realize there is such a thing as mental addiction, yes? Your brain
chemistry doesn't have to have been impacted by chemicals to be addicted to
something.

~~~
peterwwillis
I'd like to continue this discussion but it's verging on pointlessness. I
don't know how to describe the immense value that talking to someone has over
making a comment on a status update.

I guess, try to imagine yourself in a state where you cannot move any part of
your body but your eyes. Your body is slumped into a mattress for so long that
there's a permanent dent in it. You can not hear, you can not talk, but
luckily technology has progressed to such a state that you can project text
through some technological medium onto a computer. Facebook is your only
connection to the world you knew.

After years and years of existing in this state, one day you are miraculously
cured. Do you think you would still find a phone call to be an impediment to
communication at all? Maybe, maybe not, depending how comfortable you had
become with your new world. But I know what would be important to me. I'll
take a human conversation over text, every time.

~~~
Karunamon
I fail to see how this contrived situation applies to the majority of the
world who are not paralyzed, deaf, and bedridden.

------
Afal
Oh boy another internet "experiment" when someone gives up $technology and
ends up saying absolutely nothing in their post. I sure do love reading these
pretentious pieces of "intellectual" prose.

In fact I shall start an "experiment" myself to see if replacing every
instance of "experiment" in these kind of articles with "controversial
decision" to see if they read better. I mean it's as if people use the word
"experiment" to justify being avant-garde.

Except in this case it's not even a controversial thing. People are leaving
facebook for tonnes of reasons (fad has died, not finding its uses any more,
don't want to be tied with a system that hoards personal data and sells them
off to companies etc). Leaving Facebook isn't an edgy thing to do; not before
and not now. Anyone I knew that announced that they're "leaving facebook" end
up being rather smugly obnoxious when tech news headlines say "facebook did
some things that people don't like. boooo facebook!" saying they "knew all
along" and they were obviously smarter and more superior than the regular
"tech weenie" still on their facebook.

We all know what the result of this "experiment" is going to be. "My life was
significantly improved thanks to not using facebook. Just as I thought! Aren't
I clever?". There's no point denying it because that's what they're going to
say. Just like I said I'll replace "experiment" with "controversial decision".
I already know that I'm going to say "Nope. The posts were not better at all.
Told ya!" because I know that when it's something I dislike in the first place
I'm going to have a visceral reaction to hate it rather than say doing an
ACTUAL experiment which doesn't have this cognitive bias.

And I'm right, am I? I mean I'm not WRONG or something? Please someone
validate my beliefs which I portray on the internet. I desperately need
this!!!

~~~
basicallydan
Maybe that's how it came off, but if we look past the "look at me and my
controversial decision masquerading as an experiment!" layer, and focus on his
reasoning behind the decision: can you relate at all? I can.

"Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook" is one of the phrases I've found myself
and my friends saying over the past couple of years, and sometimes I don't
like hearing it, even from my own mouth.

Nevertheless, announcing it publicly as an "experiment" - it's debatable
whether this has any value or point.

------
citricsquid
> I want us to talk. I want a personal email. I want to find a way to share
> photos in a way that encourages us to talk about them with each other.

Surely you can do this with or without Facebook.

Maybe I'm a unique snowflake but Facebook to me is exactly the opposite of
that: it's a way to give a quick (often meaningless) insight into my life,
what I'm thinking or what I'm doing. It's a way to share something that
_maybe_ someone will be interested in, but probably not. If I share something
to Facebook it's not because I _want_ all my friends to see it, it's because I
think those that _might_ see it _might_ find value in it and it represents
what I'm doing/thinking/enjoying. If I want someone to see something or engage
with me in conversation I send them a message.

Facebook isn't a replacement for "normal" communication between friends, it's
an extension. The only reason anyone would want to see complaints about
someone's life falling apart is the same reason people watch train wrecks of
car crashes. They don't _care_ about the individual, they care about the
spectacle. Using any one->many communication platform for complaints about
life seems misguided.

Maybe <https://everyme.com/> would fill the void he has in his life.

~~~
itgoon
Exactly. If it replaces anything, it's because it is more efficient at it.
This is all anecdotal, I know...

Since Facebook, my email inbox is almost devoid of "RE:RE:FW:FW" broadcast
messages.

I still get plenty of email from family and friends, but they are more
selective in what they send. Things that are personal, or detailed, or very
specific to me.

I still use my phone a lot, but spend less time telling people how great (or
not) my weekend was. If they want to know, they can look. If they want
details, they call and ask.

------
cs702
As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as
she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the
'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights
because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the
true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..."

The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in the back of my mind say: no social
algorithm can ever optimize its results to take into account how people will
modify their behavior in response to the algorithm itself.

~~~
andreasvc
I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything
by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms
which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try
and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking
of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it
is very common for people to turn (i.e., abuse) their results into a metaphor
with seemingly broader implications, this is actually a mistake; their proofs
simply don't hold under those more general circumstances.

~~~
cs702
andreasvc: AFAIK, there is no program in existence today that can successfully
model "human agency" (as you put it). Wouldn't that require major
breakthroughs in AI?

And my understanding from chatting with friends in the fraud-detection space
is that, while current state-of-the-art machine-learning systems can
successfully adapt to the data they obtain from users, they cannot adapt to
users learning to game or 'route around' the system -- at least not without
programmer intervention 'from above.'

The link to Gödel and Turing I saw is that solving this problem without
intervention 'from above' would require a computer program that can
successfully model itself as it interacts with humans, but then we run into
those two guys, no?

~~~
andreasvc
Yes I see the superficial resemblance with Gödel and Turing, but it's not more
than that. The reason I insist on that is because the value of their theorems
lies in the fact that they have been mathematically proven, and the proof only
holds in very particular conditions. Basically, a system that is strong enough
to prove statements about arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency. This
hypothesis about the difficulty of certain machine learning tasks is a
conjecture, at best. I don't think you could prove it, and if you could, it
would look very different from the incompleteness proof. I think it has to do
with certain AI problems being hard, but this is a rather vague notion;
perhaps we simply lack certain concepts or mathematical tools. The important
thing about the incompleteness proofs is that that is completely ruled out:
given the right formal conditions, certain things are absolutely impossible to
do.

------
obituary_latte
My problem with fb and the reason I don't use it is simple: principal. I
understand the model, and oblige with google (though not g+ as it is pretty
quiet in my neck of the woods). But to not only give them the value of my data
but also have them go around changing things like registered email without so
much as a heads up is a slap in the face. It's like a conceited bus monitor
that just goes ahead and "does what's best for me". I'm an adult; I know what
email address I prefer to use.

Not only that, but the utter lack of transparency is concerning to say the
least. There is this monstrous set of data--PII--that this company holds and
who's to say the bus monitor doesn't all of a sudden decide that's it's best
for me if they provide this data to Experien. Or to the justice dept.

The real problem is that people are addicted to distraction. Fb offers this
droves. So much so that not only are people more than willing to hand over
their data, they are willing to hand it over to someone who thinks you don't
even deserve to know when they make sweeping changes to which parts of that
data are displayed to the world.

/rant

~~~
scott_s
I saw the email thing as a non-issue - if you're looking at my info on FB,
then the easiest way to contact me is _on FB_. It doesn't bother me that
people aren't referred to my Gmail account instead.

~~~
obituary_latte
Again, it's the principle of it--have the decency to tell people what's up.
Same applies for all the privacy and other changes that have happened un-
announced and un-explained, not just the email change.

------
richardv
Aside from the fact that this post is mostly pointless, it's also totally
misinformed.

The OP started off by stating his reasons for dropping FB in this
"experiment".. namely losing touch with the people for which he originally
signed up under.

But he clearly doesn't engage with them if he's not seeing their updates.

Your social graph needs fine tuning. It's like any good bayesian filter, it
learns over time what interests you. You can of course give it a push in the
right direction by putting people in acquaintances, or hiding specific people
from your timeline. (People in your acquaintances don't show up as often in
your newsfeed).

This post just shows that you most likely don't understand the full feature
set of Facebook and how to best optimize your social graph (not that this is
your fault). Facebook has some of the _best_ machine learning for figuring out
what is relevant to me. I'd probably argue that you click on too many memes
and don't interact with your friends as much if this is what it is serving
you.

Don't drop Facebook, just learn how to use it. I personally don't use Facebook
for interacting with that many friends. I have about 96% of my friends as
acquantiances. I have a small set of about 10 people as friends, and I
subscribe to about 100~ people. My newsfeed is so rich with really good
content.

~~~
nicholassmith
I don't want to 'optimise my social graph'. Especially given it used to work
properly and feed me the relevant content that _I_ wanted about a year ago.

You can try defend the social graph, how much Facebook has done to improve it
and so on, but for a lot of people it doesn't actually achieve what it used
to, and that's an issue.

~~~
johnchristopher
Isn't the fact we add too many contacts the core issue ? And then it turns out
that it's easier to look at funny stuff posted by anyone than diving
emotionnaly into the life turmoils of our real close friends ? I firmly
believe the simple solution is to have more than one account.

~~~
nicholassmith
I know people with multi-accounts, and multi-hundreds of friends accounts and
they all say they're annoyed by how irrelevant most of the content is by
default even with as few as 30-50 friends on an account.

~~~
johnchristopher
I have ~60 contacts and I don't suffer from that effect. Doesn't mean I don't
believe you though, as I know I made sure to force everyone's updates.

~~~
personlurking
I have 20 and even then most of it is muted. I think it's the platform and the
culture that the service creates which give rise to hiding stories and
unsubscribing from people's feeds.

Either that, or I just don't care for random, short-form content.

------
crag
Well the OP is right about one thing: Facebook has become less personal.

I regret accepting old high school/college friends (who I haven't' seen in 25
years), army buds, and family members I didn't even know I had.

Now I post, maybe once every 2 weeks. Usually something safe - like about the
current game I'm playing. I don't dare get personal on FB now.

~~~
antidoh
"I don't dare get personal on FB now."

The irony.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Indeed - the more 'connected' we are, the more socialized we're forced to be.
Facebook is not the third place simply because there are too many appearances
we're have to maintain.

------
personlurking
I've gone "old school" (trying to connect to people in 'old fashion' ways) on
many somewhat prolonged occasions and it doesn't work. It's a reflection of
society not my particular grouping of friends.

I spent a year writing many handwritten letters. People loved receiving them
but seldom, if ever, returned the favor. I try and try again to meet with my
friends to catch up (ie, going for coffee). Almost never happens, and when it
does it's a chore to actually set up. Instead, it has to be an 'event' and it
should be 'social'. I text my friends and they respond rather
quickly...because I know if I call, many times they don't answer.

Of course, all this means is that the LCD is either me or society.

~~~
chipsy
I think it's a rational trend. Our direction has been towards more
"omniscient/passive" forms of information, where you can update at your own
pace, and others consume that information optionally. Doing this is cost-
effective and allows people to prioritize their contacts by reading their feed
occasionally, rather than by doing "pavement pounding" to make calls and
arrange dates.

In doing this we miss out on some deeper conversations, but I think we gain on
balance because it allows people to _choose_ which conversations they want to
pursue. That's the key thing here - if you aren't feeling a benefit from
socializing, you aren't motivated to do it. Which inevitably leads to the
conclusion that most people are finding each other boring, even if they're
friends...

~~~
personlurking
"most people are finding each other boring, even if they're friends..."

this kind of frightens me, even though I lean towards introversion.

~~~
pdonis
I more than "lean" towards introversion, and this doesn't really _frighten_
me; it makes me a bit sad, that's all. But I doubt it's a new observation. I
suspect most people have always found most other people boring much of the
time, even if they are friends. It's just more evident now because people have
more alternatives for spending their time that fill a need for "socializing"
without requiring direct in-person interaction.

------
lukejduncan
The anecodte the poster gives is spot on and huge. There have been many times
I've thought "I wonder why I don't hear from this person anymore" and it was
simply a matter of Facebook no longer prioritizing their posts in my news
feed.

Just because someones post isn't "liked" or clicked on in some way doesn't
mean it's not valuable. It's a passive form of communication.

I don't know if this is just my perception, and maybe Facebook doesn't
prioritize things in the news feed. Regardless, it's a UX question that needs
to be asked by their team.

~~~
untog
But Facebook offers comprehensive controls that let you decide who appears on
your news feed and who does not. You just need to use them.

~~~
briandear
Can you block sponsored stories? Besides, what good are controls if they keep
'evolving' and force you to actually maintain those settings. Settings and
prefs should be fire and forget. I should not have to revisit settings in
response to some new feature. For example, that jackass new @facebook email
thing. Facebook is circa 1999 Windows.

------
nicky0
It seems more and more people are realising it: if you value your friendships,
get off Facebook.

~~~
Kliment
I wrote something about this several years ago, when I got tired of repeating
the reasons I wasn't on Facebook. Here it is if you're interested:
[http://everything2.com/title/Facebook+destroys+real+relation...](http://everything2.com/title/Facebook+destroys+real+relationships)

~~~
lathamcity
I didn't make it through two paragraphs. Can't I read a sentence without being
linked to three other web pages?

~~~
Kliment
everything2 is weird like that. Ignore the links. They are a semantic graph
pointer, not hypertext.

------
godisdad
I don't know why everyone takes Facebook so seriously.

Well, actually I do but I don't want to dive into a long comment about how
it's a voyeuristic, social panopticon and how easy it is to project your
insecurities onto it. Well, I have a small and strange solution to staying in
contact with your friends, do what I do: remove all your actual friends from
your newsfeed.

When you see them, you won't already have eagerly instantiated things to talk
about, you won't jaw off about some article they posted about the latest bath
salt murder -- you'll actually catch up and connect in genuine conversation.

The site only has as much power as you give it, posting a long diatribe about
how it has no power over you anymore because you deactivated is legitimizing
its power over you.

------
chris_wot
I have to agree with the sentiments here: it seems to me that my Facebook feed
is much less useful than it was about a year ago. I don't know what they've
done, but it's really not good.

------
kristiandupont
Not being on Facebook seems to be the new "I don't even own a tv"
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-
mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/)

~~~
telepoiss
Now that Facebook is going downhill (for me at least) I'm again actually
contemplating the idea of getting a TV.

------
ZanderEarth32
I think people put too much emphasis on Facebook and what perceived problems
it is 'suppose to solve' in their lives. You get out of it what you put it
into it, just like anything else (mostly). If you don't feel connected with
your friends, it's not FB's fault. FB to me isn't designed to make my
connections with friends stronger, it's designed to keep lingering friendships
going.

On a side note, why is it so important to declare that you are no longer using
or on Facebook. This isn't limited to the OP either. I've met people in real
life, who take great pride in not using FB anymore. I find it in the tech &
podcast world too. It's a strange type of snobbery, between 'those in the know
who aren't on facebook' versus the 'sheep who are on facebook'.

Well, I am no longer using brand name nasal spray. It wasn't fulfilling my
life I like I thought it was supposed to. I used it like the bottle says too
and while it does what it says it's supposed to, it's not what I want.

~~~
Argorak
Oh, thats easy. Because there is a huge group of people that will view you as
"off the norm" if you don't use Facebook. Which is snobbery as well. Every
time i ride the bus, I hear the word "Facebook" at least once. So, the thing
itself is a hot topic, so why not talk about it, even if you are not using it?

Your nasal spray, however, is not a hot topic.

------
tgrass
Many of the complaints could be resolved with more transparency on Facebook's
part. The frustrations seem to be generally focused on managing communication:
incoming and outgoing, an issue of curation.

The problem is, despite Facebook having many tools to calibrate one's
communications, Facebook is still a blackbox. We click the appropriate Account
Settings radio button and like the good scientists we are, wait to see what
happens. The fact of the matter is, we are pulling a lever and hoping it is
attached to some mechanism on the other side.

The same is true of Google and SEO.

Odd that obfuscation is the hallmark of our internet experiences.

------
shmerl
Facebook is defective by design as a social network. It's for profit driven,
privacy abusing and etc. and etc. It's a pity that it became a virtual
monopoly. Same bad as happened with Windows on the desktop.

------
MortenK
I really like the "Share to Facebook" button at the end of the post.

~~~
Tooluka
Aren't they automatically added on every internet webpage?:)

------
bbrizzi
So just because you don't have the proper settings on your news feed, you're
quitting facebook altogether.

I agree that facebook is a lot less personal than it used to be. Personally, I
rarely update my facebook status or stare at the newsfeed. I use facebook to
connect with "friends" whose phone number or e-mail address I don't have and
to join or create events.Those two situations are perfectly well handled by
facebook.

~~~
antidoh
Not just proper settings on his news feed. He also felt like he had to filter
himself for propriety, and found little worth in the communication that
resulted through that facade. That's not a technical issue, it's his valid
personal issue. He's not the only one with that view of facebook.

------
superasn
Yes, I too had the similar problem. I was missing out on updates from my
brother while being bombarded with stupid gifs. But as pointed out in another
comment it's just one day I had to sit for an hour and put everyone who I
don't speak on phone regularly as acquaintances. Problem solved!

It was a bit hard for me to do this though, nearly took an hour.. so here are
two suggestions

1) Brute force: option to mark everyone as acquaintances in one go and then
de-select the people back to friends.

2) More automated: Facebook should make a module where if a person allows the
app access to the phonebook, it somehow recommends a list of people who are
important to me based on my frequency of calling/speaking them offline. I know
privacy conscious people would absolutely scream in horror so this is why it
should be opt-in only.

P.S. 3) Oh and timeline still sucks. It is just too hard to read, there ought
to be a way to going back to the simple news feed.

~~~
drcube
Facebook Purity

<http://www.fbpurity.com/remove-facebook-timeline.htm>

------
danso
> _Conversing with a friend, I start to share a story I’d earlier posted on
> Facebook. Since she didn’t comment or “like” the post I guessed she hadn’t
> yet seen it. Instead, she cuts me short: “Yeah, I saw your post on
> Facebook.” And that was it. No dialog, no joy at conversing with each other,
> just friends passively watching each other from a distance. I’m guilty, I’ve
> done it too. We’ve become quiet ships, passing by in the dark silence of the
> night._

Hmm, that's just a tough anecdote to use to make his point...it could be that
that his friend is not much of a conversationalist with him.

But I admit to using FB to promote things that I don't feel like wasting real-
time talking about...like projects or articles I liked...And everyone who's
ever been on the receiving end of a mass-email is happy about that.

------
padobson
Curation of social media is becoming a big problem that only occured within
the last few years. Trying to solve it algorithmically with plus ones and
likes and upvotes seems to work when the content is centered around a specific
topic, but not something so general as your Facebook friends list or Twitter
feed.

And you can't just deny people you know from being your friend on Facebook.
It's rude. If you're ok with being rude, this doesn't apply to you, but the
quality of my Facebook stream is not worth sacrificing my manners - not when I
can get better content elsewhere without having to do so.

I haven't left Facebook, I just ignore it, because there's nothing interesting
there. I don't want to clean it up when my accounts on Twitter, Quora, Hacker
News, and Stack Exchange provide much more interesting content.

------
CodeCube
"Conversing with a friend, I start to share a story I’d earlier posted on
Facebook. Since she didn’t comment or “like” the post I guessed she hadn’t yet
seen it. Instead, she cuts me short: “Yeah, I saw your post on Facebook.”"

lol, my wife does this to me all the time :) (or should the emoticon be :( )

------
gedrap
The arguments are valid here, not one more 'Zuck I HATE YOU, remove timeline'
when actually timeline does not make any difference unless you are stalking
some one every day :))

I like the idea of the news feed filter algorithm. Just implementation is not
the best. The only way to 'fix' it is just to change friend status
(acquaintance, friend, close friend, etc). But... I am not sure if the
algorithm can be improved actually. It determines whether to show or not by
how much do you interact with some one on facebook (more or less). And it's
the only way to determine whether you might be interested or not. Because
believe me, you wouldn't be happy if you could see what everyone is posting if
you have 200+ friends.

------
k2xl
"One evening, over pizza and wine she’s telling me about a breakup and a poem
she posted. I never saw the poem. When I visited her Timeline I realized she
had been posting every day and it never once showed up in my Newsfeed. Instead
I see a photo of someone I don’t know; gliding down my Newsfeed simply because
one of my friends “liked” it and the original poster doesn’t have their
privacy settings in place."

Aye, totally agree. The day Facebook launched EdgeRank was the day Facebook
started it's decline. In fact, there's a pattern that happens to companies
that try and "assume" what their users want to see.

------
kin
These posts are pretty common I feel in HN. Every time it just comes down to
FB gets harder to use. I have a Close Friends tab and I put my close friends
in it. That's it.

I "Like" some pages but you can easily click on that drop down to unsubscribe.

FB is pretty flexible on what content you want to appear in your feed and
sometimes there are surprises but you can pretty easily scold it with a few
button clicks and it'll fix right back up. Works for me. I understand there's
a need for it to just work without the use of any interaction but then you'd
lose a lot of features if you had that.

------
bryanjclark
I've been on the fence about quitting Facebook for a while.

On one hand, it feels like junk-food-friendship: it feels like you're
connecting and communicating, but in reality the time you spend scrolling
lists on your phone could be spent with something far better: closing the FB
app and calling a buddy.

On the other hand, so many people use FB that it's tough to completely pull
away from it. It's where my generational cohort shares photos, so I can't
fully walk away unless I want to miss out on the photos from last week's
camping trip, etc.

------
donniezazen
I have taken about 2 weeks of Facebook fast. It was great. You are more
peaceful. Their is no guilt about not being able to do all the things that you
should to be doing. You save time. You have more intense face to face or phone
conversation with your friends.

I am back on Facebook because it is easier to connect to future-to-be-friends.
You connect on Facebook and may be become good friends.

I plan to slowly wind Facebook down and eventually leave it for good.

------
dkhenry
So this is exactly the problem Google+ was designed to solve.

Don't want your entire friends list to see a post only share with with a
specific circle.

Don't care to hear useless banter ? Don't include a person in your circle or
turn down the volume on that circle. I had a good friend of mine from growing
up who decided one day he was going to post nothing but memes. He went into
the silent circle and I can check in on him every now and then if I so choose.

------
zainny
The problem seems to ultimately always boil down to "I added far too many
people to Facebook as friends, and now Facebook is useless!"

To which the solution is easy: cut down the number of people you are friends
with on Facebook.

For me, I have < 30 people I've friended on Facebook. But they're real friends
and family, people I know and want to keep in touch with. And that's made all
the difference to how I use Facebook.

------
mixmastamyk
Has some good points, but I think many get the wrong idea about facebook. It's
a way to keep in touch with far off friends who you wouldn't hear from at all
otherwise. It's never affected a real relationship for me in the slightest,
other than, "I saw your pics." The news feed could be better, but it has
become more relevant since I've silenced a few overposters and blocked apps,
etc.

------
nollidge
This is fucking on-point. The Timeline is just completely useless anymore as a
way of keep tabs on people I care about. I rarely care if my friend was tagged
in a picture, and I never care that they commented on a wall post by some
random person I've never met.

I wish I could ditch it altogether, but the events and messaging are an
integral part of my social life now.

------
markessien
This is what many people use facebook group for. To keep in close contact with
a group of like-minded individuals.

------
geoka9
Please, please, can you consider implementing a higher contrast color scheme
for the text on your blog? It's really painful to read as it is now; I wanted
to and tried but had to give up.

------
pasbesoin
Without an analysis of causes, I can agree that my own FB "news feed" has been
becoming consistently crappier. Especially since roughly the beginning of this
year.

------
niels_olson
Isolated and alone, other people making money off you, and your friends don't
talk to you any more? Sounds like prostitution to me.

------
bhashkarsharma
I did the same thing 2 weeks back. People whom I meet keep asking, but
honestly, I haven't missed it for one second. I wrote a little something about
it [http://tumblr.bhashkar.me/post/23712148539/why-i-
deactivated...](http://tumblr.bhashkar.me/post/23712148539/why-i-deactivated-
my-facebook-account)

------
silentscope
how about de-friending some people? I do it and it works pretty well.

------
duncan
You'll eventually get over being "too cool" for Facebook. It's ok, I did it
too. We'll welcome you back when you change your mind. Life is too short to
worry so much about these things.

~~~
briandear
Life's too short to be watching cat videos and sifting through sponsored
stories.

~~~
duncan
All your friends do on FB is post cat videos? ..and this is Facebook's fault?
Ha. Maybe it's time to make some new friends?!

------
sarla999
goodbye facebook. why?

------
planetguy
I'm considering leaving facebook for the first time, because of the Sponsored
Stories thing, which is showing up with disturbing regularity, and frequently
winds up as ads for things that make me angry.

Nowadays, if you "Like" something, then that something can pay for the
privilege to insert whatever stories it likes into your friends' facebook
feeds, under the heading "so-and-so likes such-and-such" followed by your own
message. Interestingly the person whose name is being used for the
advertisement has _no idea_ what ads are going out under their name.

Two of these in particular show up in my facebook feed several times a week
and raise my blood pressure every time they do. One is a particularly annoying
evangelical preacher slash motivational speaker who fills up my newsfeed with
god-stuff due to the fact that a vague acquaintance I've met a couple of times
happens to "like" him. Another is a political thing which fills up my newsfeed
with posts I find highly disagreeable under the name of another friend of
mine.

What were they thinking? Facebook has designed a feature which makes me hate
my friends.

~~~
ovi256
Facebook already includes tools to solve your issues. Either unfriend the
vague acquintances, hide all their posts from your feed, or hide the annoying
posts following some criteria.

~~~
Mikushi
It doesn't work, there is a family member I have set to "Never show up on my
news feed", and keeps coming back every time.

~~~
Avenger42
I "unsubscribed" from the family member I no longer want to hear from. That
way we're still "friends", I can visit his page and read what he's been
posting, but it doesn't show up on my feed.

------
nerdfiles
Hold on. First off, you should have deleted your account years ago.

"Connecting with friends" is a terrible point to make: e-mail has been around
for decades. However, such a point does intersect with my main goal for making
this post. People are lazy. Now programmers are saying it, and now everyone
else will realize just how true it is, and being lazy has consequences.

So, we've had e-mail for decades. Why won't people use it? Instead of wasted
texting plans, etc.? You could always keep up with your friends and family
through e-mail. But the interfaces were either ugly, inconvenient, or
disorganized. It's beyond me that an {interface} should have to tell me to
contact my mother or that an {interface} should compel me to "keep up with old
friends."

This. Is. Absurd.

[Luddite Rant:] Sorry, but pick up the damn phone and call them. (Or click
"compose" and just {try} to type out something meaningful.)

I believe this finely leads into my next point: Not many of you have anything
Gricean (<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html>) to say.
What [would] you say in an e-mail to a friend? --

People don't have much to say anyway (and for my personal stake in it, it's
because they're not reading anything interesting), and Facebook isn't going to
change that. That, I think, is the point behind
<http://weknowwhatyouredoing.com/>. There's nothing-to-hide, and conversely,
there's nothing-to-show either. FB is an enabler of oversharing, and it's
allowing people to empty out too much without taking in substantive content.

I'm going to say it engenders bad cognitive hygiene.

~~~
ahelwer
How is it this same tired argument pops up every time quitting Facebook is
discussed? The sweet spot for Facebook is acquaintances. People you would not
usually email or call, and only hear about once in a while through the
grapevine. It maintains familiarity. Subbed in a co-ed game of ultimate
frisbee and met some people? Add them on Facebook.

~~~
nerdfiles
I think it's a "tired argument" because its not easily defeated. _Why_
wouldn't you "usually" e-mail or call? Why? Why would you? (This seems like
Churchill's point: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of
government except all the others that have been tried.") E-mail didn't fail,
this is why we're seeing a resurgence of it (<http://three.sentenc.es/>, 501
developers against e-mail bombardment, minimalism over e-mail organization,
etc.). Why has FB suddenly become "the best we've got" when all people seem to
argue for is particular features that could be replaced. FB is a mash-up; this
has nothing to do with "maintainability of social grace." It's a mash-up; and
consumers like mash-ups.

Seriously: _Why?_ Why do we need we need a "social framework" that captures
the rest of our human-interaction? We do we need a "social baseline"? Why do
we need a system to maintain familiarity for us? I'm not even sure I
understand the value of the point you've made, even if it is a good argument.
_I_ maintain familiarity; Facebook is a tool for supporting what I do
naturally.

> It maintains familiarity.

I'm not sure what this means. How does it do this? By making an API function
do... What?

> Subbed in a co-ed game of ultimate frisbee and met some people? Add them on
> Facebook.

Add their e-mails? Organize your labels.

The sweet spot for _who_? I'm telling others to drop it because you can
achieve those goals through other interfaces; you're telling me that others
shouldn't set their goals too high (acquaintances). My point still stands.
E-mail [certainly] would make more sense within the "acquaintances"
counterpoint.

Facebook is a set of opinions as to how one should manage (or maintain?) one's
social life. Isn't it clear that if one rejects that System, one might be
expected to provide an alternative, or possibly simpler, solution? The
argument cannot really be a surprise to you, surely.

[EDIT:] I'm _struggling_ to understand the point about "maintaining"
familiarity. I really do wish to understand it, as I feel it touches the heart
of the matter. However, such an idea may require a break-down.

I think the issue of "discovery" is an important one, but what actually am I
discovering in this digital world? A portfolio? Or a person? To argue that
FB's sweet spot is about acquaintances from the evidence that it's a good
tallying tool, or a notes tool, for friends made in the physical social world,
I think, is a bad argument, or at least it's not very compelling. I think such
an argument only re-confirms the "tired argument" I initially presented.

~~~
ahelwer
So, you're at an ultimate frisbee game. Everyone introduces themselves. You
can then go home and find them on Facebook based on their name and mutual
friends (since you probably know some other people on the team). No asking for
contact info and all the associated social baggage. There's one benefit.

Now, once you're friends with them, Facebook passively (or actively, with
minor communication such as comments) maintains familiarity. Basically what
this means is if you happen to run into them six months later, it isn't like
meeting them for the first time. Facebook can by no means fully maintain this
sort of low-level relationship indefinitely. However, I've found it's very
effective at increasing the half-life of such things.

Facebook automates the maintenance of my social network. That is valuable.

------
idleloops
I have privacy concerns about Facebook, and resent the fact that it's such a
silo, but in the main in succeeds where other technologies have failed.

It's useful for finding people - a directory. If I want to get in touch with
someone - and I don't have their contact details I can probably find them on
Facebook and fire them a message.

If email was just as easy, people would have probably taken to that. Which is
a shame, because Email could have been that easy. Privacy used to be more of a
concern, and spam drove people away from publishing their addresses in
directories.

I've left (privacy and personal reasons.) I since have missed the community.
It's encouraged me to pick up the phone more, which is a nice thing. You just
can't have the same rich interaction with people when typing compared to
talking. But you can have a greater audience. Perhaps you communicate to more
people with less content over something like Facebook, compared to having
richer relationships with fewer people. It might all balance out.

Ultimately time is a premium. I certainly don't think G+ is the answer - it's
much of the same.

------
mkramlich
With Facebook you are not their customer, you are their product. If anything,
if Zuck would like a way to monetize better without alienating users he should
add some kind of Facebook Premium/Gold account upgrade. Where users can choose
to throw a few bucks at them each month or year, whatever, in exchange for
some cool extra features, and/or to be exempt from advertisements and privacy
shenanigans. Money is money, so they shouldn't care exactly where it comes
from. But if you give the opportunity for each user to decide for themselves
whether they wish to be a product or a customer, I think it will lead to a
better situation for everyone involved. Also better fits that market divide
between the folks who want the cheapest experiences versus the best
experiences.

------
moron
Facebook has a feature specifically for this, so that you see every update
posted by people on your "VIP" list. I only know this because they put the
feature in my face, I didn't go looking for it. Come on.

------
gooddaysir
Facebook is the new television.

~~~
Etab
Related: "I don't have a Facebook" is the new "I don't have a TV." For some
reason, those who either refused to sign up or chose to deactivate their
accounts feel the need to share this with everyone everywhere.

~~~
briandear
And people that do use Facebook feel it their duty to post status messages
everytime they take a dump. Who's the real ass here?

------
Karunamon
I've really never seen a "facebook sucks" post that wasn't based on one of the
following tired arguments:

    
    
       - Ludditism
         Usually of the form:
         Technology is *TEARING US APART* don't you see?! (Response: No, not really, perhaps you just suck at communicating?)
    
       - Ignorance of use
         Usually of the form:
         WTF I got fired for posting all those pictures of me using drugs?! (Response: Learn to use the privacy settings!)
         or: It's too noisy, all of these stupid game requests.. (Response: Block the offending apps and ask your friends to knock it off)
       
       - Bad connections
         Usually of the form:
         or: [annoying/offensive] $person keeps appearing in my news feed (Response: Block the offending person!)
         or: All of my friends post pointless, boring minuate of their lives! (I.e. the Twitter argument) (Response: Don't friend those people!)
         or: I don't want to turn down my Boss' friend request and look bad! I'm $sociallyUnfasionableThing! (Response: Use lists.)
    

It was refreshing to see one that actually lays out with an actual example
what the problem is, in this case, algorithmic changes which ruined his
experience. He veered toward #1 above at the very end, but still this was
interesting to read.

Every single one of these things above, though, traces back to ignorance
(usually) or cirucmstance. Could Facebook do a better job of making these
things obvious? Absolutely. Facebook is not an intuitive site to use, and even
when you have your head around it, they usually change something arbitrarily
(the recent email thing comes to mind).

However, that said, you really shouldn't dump on the site wholesale just
because it doesn't work for you. It works for millions of other people just
fine.

~~~
Karunamon
Anyone care to rebut instead of downvote and run?

