
I miss Facebook - carlesfe
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/i-miss-facebook-and-im-not-ashamed-to-admit-it.html
======
jugg1es
This article reminds me of a complaint I've had about online gaming. I'm 36
and I remember when all online FPS games were played on centralized servers.
If you logged on at the same time of day, you would see the same players you
saw yesterday. Over time, you would develop relationships with those people
and perhaps you would eventually meet them in real life. I have 2-3 very good
real-life friends that I originally met online because of centralized FPS
servers.

Nowadays, you can jump on an online FPS whenever you want and have a full
server of players. But the chances you'll play someone from yesterday are very
slim unless you deliberately 'friend' them. I feel sorry for kids growing up
right now that are missing out on finding your own 'people' online.

~~~
mod
FWIW I have made many friends in Destiny 2 and I have plans to meet some of
them in person.

Many games do not foster this, but I think destiny does.

~~~
larkeith
MMO games still allow for this as you (generally) select one larger,
persistent server at character creation, and remain on that server.

------
lordnacho
Hits the nail on the head.

For me the main uses of FB are now:

1) Rolodex of friends, with reminders from the ones who actually use it.

2) Bad version of stumbleupon. Seriously large amount of unuseful content, but
it does kick up something interesting now and again.

3) Reasonable funnies stream. There's always someone with a good meme.

There's no real content though. All the news commentary is simply terrible.
Loads of people trying to be funny. An enormous number of flamewars. Very few
people who know anything at all, not just in politics but science as well. The
actually insightful comments are drowned out completely.

Other things:

\- Loads of comments are just people tagging a friend so they see an article.
FB could fix this very easily, I don't really care if Richard Head wants his
friend James Smith to see some article.

\- Autoplay videos are annoying

\- Obvious parasite accounts aren't dealt with. I know my dad hasn't started a
new account with the same pic and added me. Do something about it.

All in all, I'm not sure FB would have become FB if its product was what it is
now 10 yers ago.

~~~
HenryBemis
Nice alternatives for (3) are 9gag and imgur. They got the 'typical':

connect.facebook.net, google-analytics.com, googletagservices.com,
gstatic.com, imasdk.googleapis.com, scorecardresearch.com,
platform.twitter.com, amplitude.com, amazon-adsystem.com, googletagmanager.com

but once you block them with Privacy Badger and/or NoScript (or add them to
your hosts file), they are an endless source of memes and other funnies.

~~~
saagarjha
I don't want to sound like a snob, but 9GAG and Imgur are pretty awful
communities with content taken from Reddit–which itself "steals" content, but
it's less horrible about it. Both of these communities are heavily moderated
and most users don't actually realize where their "fresh memes" are coming
from: 9GAG's moderation team actually sways voting to control what hits the
front page and immediately bans accounts that mention "Reddit" in any way.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I don't disagree, but ... should I care? I personally don't care where my
funnies originated, only that I get them. If 9gag is a nice skin over ripping
off reddit but preselected, why shouldn't I use that?

------
adjkant
IMO Facebook has three useful features left: the personal rolodex, event
planning, and groups. I truly think that a large number of users would migrate
over if someone replicated those three. No large info collection on your
profile, no wall or posts, just a friend/messaging option, the ability to
create events, and to organize into groups made by users to make posts there
only, not in public. You know, to actually make and support communities that
would actual exist in physical space.

With the troubles of Facebook and the alternatives, many just don't use
Facebook anymore, even if those features aren't broken. If it's a fresh
service with no ties to Facebook, I think you'd see something interesting.

~~~
labster
Those were the same three features that were a core part of thefacebook before
they introduced the News Feed. If it was the same site that it was in 2005,
but with more people, I'd still be using it. But now, it's mainly a machine
that turns other people's content into dollars.

~~~
bcherny
Groups was launched in ‘08, I think.

~~~
labster
Not possible. One of the things I did in the week after the News Feed was
launched was to join a rather large (for 2006) group protesting the News Feed.

------
jaabe
I miss IRC, for a lot of the same reasons the author misses Facebook. Being
above 35 like the author, I think it’s more the fact that people just aren’t
chatty anymore. It’s anecdotal of course, but if I look at myself, I’m really
not that chatty anymore either. I too used to have late night chats about
random stupid things, but right now, I can even remember when I last saw 3AM
unless it was to feed a baby or clean up after a sick child.

So when I say I miss IRC, it’s probably more true to say that I miss the
freedom that comes with having almost no responsibilities. Maybe I should work
on making more of my time, mine though.

~~~
gbear605
As a twenty year old, the problem is not that _people_ aren’t chatty; it’s
that the people you interact with aren’t chatty. For any niche topic you can
find a Discord server or a Telegram channel or a Signal group chat or a Slack
server or a whatever, where people are chatting about it 24/7\. It’s the same
model as IRC, although it is unfortunately now siloed.

~~~
epncs
How was IRC not siloed when you've always had different networks managed by
different people?

~~~
gbear605
It’s siloed by technology now when it wasn’t before - you could connect to any
irc server with one client but you need a different client for each network
now.

------
k_sze
I don’t miss Facebook. I just weaned myself off Facebook about a week or two
ago.

I realised that I needed to get off Facebook because it made me feel
depressed. When I was on Facebook, I would look at the feed and become
poignantly aware of how boring my life is. (I don’t travel. I don’t do any
“fun” thing. I don’t go to parties.)

So one day I decide that I have had enough and I just uninstalled Facebook
from my phone, closed all Facebook tabs in my browser sessions, and turned off
all notifications (including the e-mail one that tries to drag you back in).
The only notification that I leave enabled is account/security notifications.
I haven’t outright deactivated/deleted my Facebook account because I may still
need it someday for some stupid reason.

Anyway, as soon as I took those steps, I freed myself from the reminder of my
misery. I’m not actually having any more fun, but at least I’m no longer
constantly comparing my life with those of my “friends”.

So what about people who may want to reach me via Facebook? I’ve decided that
if someone can or know only to reach me via Facebook, then they are not my
real friend anyway and I don’t need them in my life.

Quit Facebook. It can be done and it _should_ be done.

~~~
lokedhs
Same for me. I've kept my account, but I only log in once every few months or
so when I feel really bored.

Whenever I do, it only takes minutes before I start to feel bad, mostly for
the same reasons you do. I then realise that literally just sitting in your
chair, staring at a monitor that is turned off, is a better use of your time
than going to Facebook.

------
hateful
This article reminded me of what Facebook was and the fact that I did actually
like it when I first joined. The major complaint I see is usually centered
around politics. But for me, I never saw any of that. The main reason I've
stopped using it is simple: I used Facebook as a tool to see what people were
doing in a passive way that I wouldn't have otherwise. But now the feeds are
geared towards the advertisers, not what my friends are doing. Therefore it is
no longer a good tool. It's bad software, plain and simple. I really wish
there was a better alternative. I know a lot have tried, but they don't seem
to "get" what Facebook was for some reason. They all seem to be Twitter
alternatives rather than Facebook ones.

The number one feature about the way Facebook works is simple: I can share
something on someone else's wall/feed/timeline and all of their friends can
see it and comment. No other site/network seems to have that feature. Google+
didn't have it, Mastodon doesn't have it. Everything is post on your own page.

~~~
mszcz
Aside from the stuff mentioned everywhere else, my biggest complain was
ephemeral nature of the feed.

If I saw something interesting I had to act on it at that percise moment or
never ever see it again. No scrolling, no page reloads, no "I'll do it in a
sec". Once something was out of my sight the Facebook fold seemed to devour it
forever ;p

If I recall correctly the feed wasn't always like this, but once it became
like that it took only a couple of frustrating months for me to start truly
hating FB.

Nowadays, just because of that, I use FB only maybe once per month and usually
only when I have to. Hell, maybe that ephemeral nature of the feed did some
good afterall? ;P

~~~
yason
Yes, this is frustrating, especially with the "Top stories" feed which seems
to quite randomly choose something interesting occasionally and when you go
see it again it's buried by something else.

The "Most recent" feed at least tries to stay coherent for a while I still see
posts that I can't find later unless I spotted who shared it and where, and
then go look that up — and I still might not find it.

However, the "Most recent" feed is also quite short: you can easily hit the
bottom which makes you realise that you probably saw 1% of all the "most
recent" posts. This isn't the only case, though.

I have a custom list that includes all of my friends so that I could see their
posts, hopefully most if not all of them. Guess what? I only get maybe ~20
posts until that list runs out of items.

So, it seems that it's quite impossible to get to see what's happening in your
friends' lives by using a Facebook view into their posts. And this is why I
started using Facebook in the first place.

It wouldn't be technically impossible to dig up the last 7 days of posts from
the couple of hundred people I have as friends and sort them based on likes
and amount of commentary. I could then consume that list to the extent I want.
But that wouldn't be good business, apparently.

------
charleshan
This really hits home. So what ruined Facebook?

The Wall was replaced by an algorithm which sunk original content below a
flood of ads, fake news, and externally shared content "you might like". We
stopped seeing original content. Then, people stopped sharing personal stuff,
as nobody interacted with it.

~~~
system16
I quit Facebook many years ago, but one of the reasons I stopped engaging with
it was after they started creepily sharing interactions made on the site.
Seeing "Pam liked this photo" or "Dave commented on this post" in my feed -
almost certainly without them knowing I was seeing it - made me very hesitant
to interact with the site at all. I'm sure they have a ton of metrics proving
it increases engagement for the majority of users, but it was enough to turn
me off the site completely.

~~~
jwalton
This is exactly what made me stop using it. I didn't post anything for a few
weeks, and I started getting these fake "notifications" that had nothing to do
with me. It felt like Facebook was some sort of stalky overly clingly ex,
trying way too hard to get me to engage. So creepy.

------
azangru
I am from approximately the same age group as the author. I remember FidoNet
and PhpBB forums. I remember blogging, and LiveJournal. But I completely
missed the Facebook craze. The first time I logged into Facebook — after
having used LiveJournal for several years — I was shocked by the unfamiliarity
and unintuitiveness of the interface, and the total absence of formatting
options. I looked around — and then ran back to the familiar internet tools
and services.

It’s weird. Seeing stories pop up lately about how people get disenchanted
with Facebook, I keep wondering what the big deal was.

 _(And another source of wonder and cognitive dissonance is how a company with
what seemed like such an unappealing product managed to attract so smart
engineers and to bring about a number of significant technical innovations.)_

~~~
auntienomen
LiveJournal was, for my money, the correct balance of text to image content.
You could upload photos and other media, but it was a bit of a pain. And in
2006, people didn't necessarily have the ability to play media anyways, at
least not without a few false starts. Consequently, people wrote. Their
thoughts weren't always that interesting. But they were at least original and
the product of real effort. It worked fairly well, and was a lot more
appealing to me than memes and viral marketing.

------
catchmeifyoucan
I love this article. Sums it up perfectly. Back during my school days,
everyone was on Facebook. Like as if your friends were always with you.
However, lack of moderation, the decrease in content quality and endless walls
of meaningless excess really kills the value prop. For me, it's not
necessarily privacy - it's more about trust. And I know that's one thing
Facebook has lost.

------
surfsvammel
I share the feeling. I too am in my mid-thirties, still know my ICQ number by
heart (8 digits by the way), was on IRC and used Facebook in the early days.

Nowadays I often wonder if my sentimental feeling about the social networks of
yesterday is just a function of me getting old.

The world changes. It is probably neither better nor worse. It’s just
different.

~~~
OrgNet
I had a 6 digit ICQ number and I'm about the same age... someone deleted my
account using my unlocked computer and I was never able to get it back...

~~~
snvzz
>someone deleted my account using my unlocked computer

Strikes me as insane that they'd allow account deletion without entering
password for confirmation.

Also, what an asshole, whoever did that to you.

~~~
OrgNet
She did worst... but I got her back, somewhat. I just wish that ICQ would have
been willing to undelete my account.

BTW, at that time, almost noone required passwords to make major changes to
your account if you were logged in.

------
kerng
Back when Facebook changed to the Newsfeed algorithm I knew it wasn't good and
I didnt like it. In retrospect its definently when it all started going
downhill for me as a user of the platform. Now, I haven't posted anything in 3
years....

~~~
randycupertino
Exactly this. It used to be a real-time showcase of what my friends and family
were up to. Great to keep tabs on everyone I care about lives. Now it's just
ads and the same few posters. I don't even read the newsfeed at all any more.
I go directly to a few people's pages to see updates on a few close friends,
nieces and nephews and that's it.

------
eljimmy
Everything that he mentions he misses is now in a group chat for me. A group
of 20 or so friends have a Telegram group where we spit out random thoughts,
talk about news, day to day life, spontaneously throw together plans to hang
out or go for dinner, post candid/embarrassing photos of stuff we’re doing,
etc.

Some days only a few people are active, other days you’ll open it up to
hundreds of unread messages from everyone.

It’s not public, but it doesn’t need to be. In fact we end up having more
entertaining and honest chats since it’s private.

~~~
frosted-flakes
I feel like everybody I know is part of a private group chat with their
family. With some, it extends out to all the first cousins (40+ people), but
for me it's just my siblings and their spouses and my parents. Baby pictures,
jokes, vacation pictures, random questions--stuff that Facebook was known for,
but not like Instagram at all. There's no posturing, since it's all family and
close friends.

We used to use WhatsApp, but recently switched to Signal.

~~~
emerongi
If only Signal had reasonable multi-device support.

I don't use Facebook, but the rest of my family uses it for group chat. It
honestly makes sense as it's more usable. We also have a Signal group, but
it's fallen out of favour.

The other thing that I know people like about Facebook is groups (different
from group chat). If Signal also had the equivalent of that, it would be much
easier to get people to switch.

------
Nextgrid
I am not sure the "niche" Facebook used to fill even exists anymore.

The social landscape has changed for the worse. People no longer want to
connect with friends, they want to show off how better/popular/wealthier they
think they are.

Even if someone relaunched that era's Facebook without all the crap I wouldn't
be surprised if today's society still manages to make it toxic.

~~~
kartan
> The social landscape has changed for the worse. People no longer want to
> connect with friends, they want to show off how better/popular/wealthier
> they think they are.

It is the gamification factor. People is optimizing their behavior to get more
likes not to get better connected.

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game"
summarizes quite well the situation.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
So we need to remove likes from Facebook? It definitely was a different place
prior to the feature.

------
soniman
There was a period when the internet was new for everybody, and everybody was
discovering it at the same time. It was like the first few weeks of college,
except it was the entire world. And that's not going to happen again. Somebody
will come up with a new social media app that solves the problems of the
current platforms, and it will have some of the old magic. But the rush of the
early days of the internet / blogging / social media, was a one time thing.

~~~
didsomeonesay
Eternal September is finally over...

------
fullshark
Perhaps the writer misses their 20s now that they are 35, like almost
everyone.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
I'm 36, I agree with the article to the last comma and I don't think it's just
an age thing. I enjoyed IRC and ICQ a lot, met a lot of people there, some of
which are now very important in my life. I loathed when they were replaced (in
my country) with MSN messenger. I didn't like Fotolog, but I enjoyed the very
early days of Orkut and then the Facebook golden age mentioned here, and I
hated when it became an ad feed and people migrated to Instagram.

So (for me) it's not just a downward slope where older = better as I become
crankier, it's that some particular services at some particular points in time
hit a sweet spot that others didn't. For me, important qualities are
protagonism of text (networks with protagonism of images like Fotolog or
Instagram are posturing tools, as the author says), thematic groups/channels
(I like to discuss topics like politics, philosophy, videogames, learn
languages, etc.), and ways to actually meet people (MSN didn't have this).

Facebook was great in its peak as it ticked all these boxes, with the added
value that you could find real-life acquaintances and follow them - no social
network has ever been that strong at letting me know about my old classmates'
weddings and children, which is a cool thing IMO.

Today, the widespread social tool that comes closest to my ideal may be
Telegram groups, but the discovery and meeting people part is only so-so.

------
Animats
If you really struggle with configuring it, and ignore the right hand column
entirely, you can still sort of track what your friends are doing. But I
stopped looking at Facebook much a few months back. Maybe twice a month now.

Remember, sharing is spamming.

------
joe_the_user
I assume that I'm fully outside any influential demographic now since not only
am I not on Instagram but I don't know anyone on Instagram. My friends who
don't do Facebook do either email or Discord (and a good portion of my friends
do do Facebook).

Honest question, is the division of the world into distinct social networks an
expression of increasing social stratification around the world? I know little
about Instagram but it sounds a lot like a place for people aspiring to
wealth.

~~~
return0
> is the division of the world into distinct social networks an expression of
> increasing social stratification

i think it is more about the level of need for social signaling. affluent
people probably dont need it , except the narcissistic ones, while signaling
seems to be very important for the middle classes.

------
Zak
I agree. I've tried using FBPurity to hide things that aren't my friends
creating text or pictures themselves, or more simply, setting "friends feed"
to be the default. That used to help, but not so much anymore. The problem is
most of them have stopped, or greatly cut back posting.

I remember when I first decided to create a Facebook account. I had previously
avoided social media. I wasn't motivated enough for Livejournal, and Myspace
seemed like a useless vanity page. After watching over some friends' shoulders
as they used Facebook, I saw that it was a genuinely useful communication
tool.

The share button was the worst thing to happen to Facebook from this user's
perspective. It actually did exist before I started using Facebook, but most
people didn't press it often. Facebook is not a very good place for news
stories compared to Google News. Facebook is not a very good place for cat
pictures compared to reddit. By trying to be the place people go for things
like that, Facebook has ceased to be good at the thing it _was_ good at:
keeping up to date with an extended group of friends and family.

------
diogenescynic
I miss 2005-2007 era Facebook. It was so different before the Newsfeed was
introduced. It was a really different concept when it was limited to college
students. You could add your dorm or class and see other students in the same
groups. It was really useful for making friends.

Now it’s just shameless bragging or political shouting and Zuck has become a
quasi-villain which makes using it more unsavory.

------
agumonkey
I never think positively about facebook these days, but one author's point
rings a bell:

there's a point before and after society rerooted itself over internet (jobs,
businesses), which caused a huge change. Everything is a business in disguise
now.. no more freedom

------
rock_artist
I'm Facebook free for more than 10years. It's hard, as a lot of information is
considered as delivered once it's on Facebook (like community updates on my
neighborhood).

But anything becomes nostalgic. I still remember my own BBS joining fidonet so
it was able to provide email service (once a night from a Hub BBS). I still
remember the ping-pong virus. Or even Google not being evil.

I guess in a few years will see a post "I miss iPhone" :)

------
acarl005
I miss the News Feed back when it showed mostly information about my friends'
lives. At some point I feel like their algorithms started showing me more
links to clickbait and other time-wasting bullshit. After a while it gave me
almost nothing I actually cared about, which induced me to install the "News
Feed Eradicator for Facebook" Chrome extension. I visit FB very rarely
nowadays.

------
bayesian_horse
I also use Facebook only for the positive things it brings me. I refuse any
conventional "news" stories I see there.

------
caprese
> I miss knowing how my online friends are really doing these days. Being able
> to go through their life, their personal updates, the ups and the downs.

What? That was horrible! The simpletons talking about every mood change, or
publicly plotting juvenile retribution against an ex-lover, or a respected
keynote speaker who was previously isolated to that role now inviting you to
Mafia Wars

I deleted my first “everyone I met everywhere” Facebook in 2008.

Allowing a new bare bones one in 2012 which is merely deactivated now.

This article is a mere nostalgic highlight reel, ironic how it complains then
about instagram

Yeah ok, people in their 30s complain about selfies, selfie sticks, pictures
of food, ephemeral stories, vertical videos, and older people using social
media. They’re lost in between a dichotomy demographics that do not care and
who these current networks are made for.

I would say the delayed gratisfaction is bigger component to the prior
experience: planning, coordinating, and uploading just a few photos from
different sources much later. The next day even, if your friends were tech
savvy and had fast connections. The dopamine of social interaction coming in
bursts, and the anticipation of the possibility having its own allure.

------
newman8r
I've been without it for the better part of a decade. The only time I missed
it is when I realized I couldn't purchase facebook ads.

------
BadassFractal
My solution was to create a fake account with a fake name on FB, never
download the app to my phone, never share my phone number, never upload any
contacts, never use a real picture, and only add close friends who know who
the fake profile is.

Makes me pretty much impossible to look up on the system, I value my privacy
and not being listed is important to me. This gives me the best of both
worlds. I can join all the interest groups I want, follow all the events,
without having to share my identity.

~~~
saagarjha
I'd expect it to not be very hard to find you, from the perspective of someone
willing to put in a bit of effort, based on who your friends are associated
with.

------
crispinb
As soon as Facebook became a widespread thing I knew it was going to become a
shitshow, and Zuckersnuffles was such an obvious snake I couldn't even
consider empowering him by turning over personal info. I've never had a real
account, and even my fake dev accounts fell into disuse as I rejected more
contracting gigs involving FB integration. I feel somewhat vindicated, though
we have a way to go when even many 'ethical' NGOs still require FB for
engagement.

------
carlesfe
Why was the title of the submission changed? The original one was the same as
the blog post's

------
Moxdi
I feel that we need a Facebook, but without pictures, just text

~~~
Nextgrid
Pictures are good, as long as they are _original_ pictures and not reposted
memes & other garbage.

Facebook needs _original_ content. Not links to outside crap, no clickbait, no
memes. That alone would make the platform much better.

------
gmailnet
I have 4 Facebook accounts... I don't miss Facebook.

------
chrisbrandow
This is precisely how I feel

------
Causality1
Facebook is designed to be addictive and pervasive. Missing it does not mean
you need it back in your life. Stay strong.

~~~
pandler
After reading the article, better phrasing would be “I miss what Facebook used
to be”. It may be addictive and pervasive now, but the feeling is that it no
longer fills the niche it used to.

