

When Facebook got my Mom fuming with anger - zaidf
http://o2h2.com/when-facebook-got-my-mom-fuming

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r00fus
I still maintain that Facebook is, by design, anti-social.

Society is a balance between private and public activity (another HNer talked
about warrens and commons).

When that balance is ignored, then the result is antisocial whether it over-
promotes privacy or publicity.

Most people are not wanton socialites, but Facebook only caters those who
are... the rest of us are just (taken) along for the ride.

~~~
christoph
This is the exact reason I shut my account and have not looked back since. I
actually find my life a lot more social since as well, people now email, text,
skype and phone me a lot more, and it's not all on public display.

Anyone that says it's down to your friends to correctly set privacy levels is
nuts, that clearly doesn't enter 90% of peoples minds.

~~~
Stormbringer
I have lots of friends overseas/inter-state. Facebook used to be brilliant for
keeping up with them (ie mostly ignore them unless they're going to be in my
part of the woods, and then use it to coordinate a catchup).

Recently it has passed some kind of threshold, or the algorithm has changed,
or I have too many friends using it to give too many unimportant updates;
because now it seems to throw away anything older than about 12-13 hours,
which makes it nigh useless for the one thing it was really good at (for me).
(And yes, I killed all the app spam, so it's not that)

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iamdave
Maybe this issue has nothing to do with Facebook, and has everything to do
with the fact that you need to have a talk with your mom about a thing called
BOUNDARIES.

Call in the next thirty minutes and get a free pack of SPACE

~~~
zaidf
Already did. If you read the post, you'd see I acknowledge the different
levels of this issue. Solving this with a talk with my mom is simply a bandaid
IMO.

A comment I made to a friend my Mom has zero connection with should never end
up in her newsfeed.

~~~
182446
Wait, what was your mother angry about? Seeing a half naked man/woman or was
it the content of your comment?

~~~
zaidf
Not my comment. The picture of the naked guy with his fingers wrapped around
his penis.

~~~
bingaman
Welcome to the internet.

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calloc
Diaspora has solved this fairly well ... I can't see anyones posts unless I am
friends with them, and only then if they post in a certain "Aspect".

Makes it easy to separate work from friends and from family.

~~~
182446
There is a big problem with that. Your newsfeed instantly becomes more boring
by being less diverse.

~~~
calloc
I am actually not too worried about that. I enjoy being able to login, at a
glance see that there is nothing new, and leave.

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zaidf
There is a general tip about not friending your Mom. While I appreciate that,
in my case I mostly use facebook for keeping in touch with close and extended
family spread across the world. So in my case, it's the friend that gets the
ditch.

In an ideal world, though, I wouldn't need to ditch anyone. I have no qualms
with my friends because no relationship is black and white and every
relationship has a context. By Facebook showing my comment on a friend's
picture in my Mom's newsfeed, it's showing the content alright, but without
any context.

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CurrentB
Wait I'm sorry I'm seriously confused, what what she mad at? A "half-naked
American Idol winner"? Why would that make her fume with anger?

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Groxx
This is one of the major problems I have with Facebook, from a social-
usability standpoint. They provide _zero_ separation between your friends.

This, which came around during the "Google Circles" mistaken-hubbub, describes
the problem very nicely: [http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-
social-networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-
network-v2?from=embed) your group of friends A may be offended by what group B
does / not want to see it. But Facebook shows it all.

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sp332
Or, your friend should set the privacy on that photo (or all photos by
default) so that only friends can see it. Edit: downvotes? dang, what'd I
miss?

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RockyMcNuts
Given the choice between a feature being highly viral, and respecting an
appropriate level of privacy, Facebook will choose highly viral every time.

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vermasque
Such a scenario is one of the reasons I didn't mind deactivating my Facebook
profile. I feel like I would be obligated to friend my parents and relatives,
leading to at a minimum some amount of awkward monitoring.

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civilian
His mistake was friending his mom. I stopped this issue in it's tracks. Even
before my parents got facebook accounts, I told them that I love them, but I'm
not going to be facebook friends with them.

~~~
zaidf
It's kinda the opposite for me. About 75% of my communication is with my 20-30
close extended family members. It's done a great deal in keeping us together.
Despite geographic distance, we can still have common inside jokes not too
much unlike like old times when we lived in the same hood and met face to
face.

Given how I use fb, if it is between my family and my friends, the friends
lose out. I unfriended the friend, not my mom in this case.

