iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

I mean, I've got a Google Voice line I use, and I know that they're likely pulling out keywords to feed me ads. But at least they haven't sold 'em to the Russians.

so much of online activity is creative, it is akin to labor. a kind of virtual labor. fan art and things increase the value of a private brand

I've been toiling to put a little extra shine on the ILX brand for more than 16 years now, and so far, Ned hasn't paid out one dime on my investment.

i have the chrome (lol) extensions that block pixel and the FB ads. i have a flip phone, so no apps. i use FB to keep up with my family and my extremely large number of former students.

https://instagram.com/p/BhaSFhfF7IR/

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

― pplains, Tuesday, April 10, 2018 8:20 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For me its just a way to be less distracted, lots of work and finals coming soon.

I mean, I've got a Google Voice line I use, and I know that they're likely pulling out keywords to feed me ads. But at least they haven't sold 'em to the Russians.

― pplains

that you know of.

Photo of Zuck's notes, by AP's @andyharnik pic.twitter.com/wF0WAkDdI4

— Stefan Becket (@becket) April 10, 2018

https://i.imgur.com/pgOCtmK.gif

xp

Zuck is the super creep but today was a reminder that technology reporters (???) are the only people dumber than the US Senate. The world needs fewer Nilay Patels and Leo Laportes.

i use Opera w the built-in VPN and Duck Duck Go as my search engine. plus Privacy Badger to block ad tracking. scrobble THIS motherfuckers

It seems strange to me that someone would stop using the Facebook site/app, but continue to use their Messenger.

Like, "I will NOT look at photographs of my friends watching a baseball game, but I WILL allow them to eavesdrop and record every single thing I text, as well as the location I was in when I texted it."

I'm not leaving for political reasons so much as personal reasons. I don't want to be on FB cos I'm spending too much time scrolling around on it, but there are still people on Messenger I don't want to lose contact with. If it were so simple I'd delete my account entirely, but it would mean losing touch with all sorts of friendships I've built up over the last 15 years or something.

But you'd still have us!

https://i.imgur.com/93oN16v.jpg

I'm trying to convince myself to make new local friends to make up for all the friends I lost when I dumped Facebook. It's not going great so far.

Before I deactivated, I messaged everyone I wanted to stay in touch with and sent them my number. I've now got a nice little Whatsapp group with local friends for organising get togethers and such. Not ideal - I don't see myself escaping the ZuckerEmpire any time soon

I still use facebook but i deleted the app and the messenger app and turned off "platform" and all third-party apps/sites.

If you lost a 'friend' because you got rid of Facebook, that wasn't a friendship. Is it really that hard to stay in touch via other means of communication? Certainly not hard to the extent that you would rather cut a 'friend' out of your life altogether.

I really dislike the people who use that app to track when they get defriended and then post about it on fb.

A lot of people I tended to keep in touch with over Facebook were music people - journalists, people in the local scene, musicians and geeks, as well as people back home who I don't really see very often but keep me up to date with what's going on. Always saw it as more than a fancy telephone for me and my pals

Signal isn't as cute as WhatsApp and it doesn't do embeds, but you can do group chat with it and it works fine.

Yep, Signal is perfectly functional.

If you lost a 'friend' because you got rid of Facebook, that wasn't a friendship. Is it really that hard to stay in touch via other means of communication? Certainly not hard to the extent that you would rather cut a 'friend' out of your life altogether.

― pomenitul

oh, bollocks. yeah, i know, if they were real friends we'd be out there sending smoke signals to each other across the continents and the fact that it was a horribly inconvenient and inefficient method of communication wouldn't matter at all. i guess i don't have any real friends, only chance acquaintances i've known and travelled across the country to visit and hung out with continuously over multiple media platforms for more than twenty years.

individual friendships? yeah, i can and do maintain them. an online social circle? no. not without facebook.

not only that but god bless you if your long time long-distance friends have kids and you expect to keep in touch with them

talk about so not gonna happen

Sorry, I'm not buying this Stockholm Syndrome bullshit. I keep in touch with my long-distance friends via e-mail and it works just fine.

tbh that is great for YOU
it doesn't mean your model can apply to everyone else

Given the sheer dystopian sway Facebook has accumulated over the years, it's more than just a question of preference tbh.

I'm not against the concept of social media per se, but I do find the mental gymnastics used to ensure that Facebook remains too big to fail rather unsettling.

it's not stockholm syndrome -- i would gladly go back to having phone conversations if anyone had time to have them with me
i am not defending facebook, i am saying that staying in touch and maintaining actual relationships is more complicated and difficult than most people give it credit for

It is totally a different thing from 'keeping in touch with close friends on a one-to-one basis'. I organise events around my city. I have to get in touch with venue managers, fellow promoters, DJs, musicians, journalists, performers and punters etc etc. Most of the events I run are heavily promoted on social networks, namely Facebook. It's just a better way to track down and get the message out to all these different people.
If my band releases a new bit of music, we want to let our 'fanbase' (ahem) know about it, it's a lot easier to post about it on our page.
There are tons of uses for Facebook beyond just staying in touch with a couple of close friends.

I’m ok with using Facebook for professional PR but to my mind that’s quite different from keeping up with friends. Tbf the way anglophones use the word ‘friend’ is one of my biggest pet peeves as an immigrant so that might have something to do with it.

Facebook execs have some jargony line/term about how Facebook isn't really for keeping in touch with your closest friends, it's for keeping in touch with your more peripheral friends -- the people you went to high school with and want to know what they're up to, former coworkers, neighborhood parents of kids your kids see at the playground, etc. And I find that to be exactly true.

pomenitul yr basking in the light of pure, true friendship...so wise

only got time for real friends. kick everyone else i see hard in the face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-zC1xXK3E

OTOH one of the weird effects of facebook is that their algorithm winds up creating this arbitrary and self-reinforcing circle of people you interact with most -- for me it's like this friend of my college best friend that I only hung out with three times, a middle aged poet my wife knows, a woman I vaguely had a crush on in high school, a neighborhood mom, a guy I never met who just does really good political posts, and a bass player I played with once, and a lot of this is just about them all being people who seem to post a lot.

I assume you’re taking the piss but it is partly a cultural thing. In many (most?) languages you reserve the word ‘friend’ for a close friend. Kind of like how a small coke in the US would be considered large in France. Everything (formally if not substantially) tends towards the superlative in North America.

Xps

Do you guys ever have the ‘ugh, this friend is liking my posts all the time’ reaction?

yeah, and unfortunately that friend is my mother

I'm not against the concept of social media per se, but I do find the mental gymnastics used to ensure that Facebook remains too big to fail rather unsettling.

― pomenitul

i find the way the human mind works unsettling on a regular basis, sure. i also don't see the point of making it a question of individual morality. facebook isn't going to go away any faster on account of you lecturing everybody who uses it about how wrong they are to do so. nobody cares whether you or i think it's justified for them to use facebook.

Do you guys ever have the ‘ugh, this friend is liking my posts all the time’ reaction?

― suzy

i used to and then he stopped doing it. turns out he died.

^ man alive otm. it becomes a bit like a facebook-curated version of ILX where you're interacting with such a random mix of people and rarely with those coveted close friends. For me it was the ex-girlfriend of someone who I knew with the local music scene; a couple of music journalist who mostly post YouTube videos and politics stuff; someone I went to school with; a Scotsman I used to speak to on a messageboard pre-ILX; and a bunch of Ilxors and ex-Ilxors. Not many other people

I assume you’re taking the piss but it is partly a cultural thing. In many (most?) languages you reserve the word ‘friend’ for a close friend. Kind of like how a small coke in the US would be considered large in France. Everything (formally if not substantially) tends towards the superlative in North America.

Sure but in France they use the word 'ami(e)' to mean 'lover' as well, so it's also confusing. English has 'acquaintance' but it's a bit of a formal thing, and could be seen as a bit rude/impersonal in the wrong context. Also remember that Facebook uses 'friend' as the vernacular for anyone you interact with on FB.

fwiw as a non-anglo I don't recognise what poenitul's describing at all. I refer to what are actually acquaintances as "friends" in portuguese and german all the time. It's not signing a contract of eternal devotion, the equivalents for acquaintance always seem like a diss of sorts, everyone knows what you mean anyway.

Petit(e) ami(e) means boyfriend/girlfriend, ami(e) is quite dated, conjuring up images of pre-Mai 68, even pre-WW2 couples. Copain and copine are more common nowadays, and can indeed convey both friendship and romantic love, though there's a bit of a sexist, heteronormative assumption behind their general use: if I have a copain, chances are he's my buddy because I'm male and he is too; if i I have a copine, then she's probably my girlfriend.

xp

Sorry, I'm not buying this Stockholm Syndrome bullshit. I keep in touch with my long-distance friends via e-mail and it works just fine.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 7:36 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll never defend Facebook but like...my wife and i are both dealing w/varying degrees of "aging parents" via long distance and raising a kid (and trying to maintain his social life and extracurricular activities), while she works a full time office job and i work from home, and trying to maintain our own social lives with the friends we have here AND trying to find time to spend time with each other. we have long-distance friends we don't want to lose touch with but neither side has the time for regular correspondence, and Facebook for its considerable drawbacks is extremely good for passively maintaining contact w/friends and seeing what's going on in their lives and remaining part of their lives somehow and vice versa, when you may not have the time to do so more actively. I'd like to have that time but...no...not happening now.

i don't NOT email my close friends, and i'm on record saying that i think FB is artificial in how you'll have people you forgot existed emerge from the past to reconnect, or people you should have never stayed in touch with still popping up on your wall to comment on a life event you're posting about or whatever. but for my friend who lives in Concord, MA who i'll likely see once per decade from here on out, someone i love dearly and contact periodically via email, it's nice to have them "there" as it were.

variations on this have popped up with every kind of new communication though, even email. even phone, i'm sure! Facebook is different in its creepiness but that's a separate issue from "the ways in which we stay connected with people."

and yeah having tons of friends/acquaintances living in different countries...sure my all-time besties I could still keep in touch with via e-mail, but there's tons of people who I do care about and it's nice to casually keep up with their lives. Sending regular thoughtful e-mails to each one seems impracticable.

Bigger issue is also that even if FB were to disappear tomorrow there'd be plenty of other sources for Cambridge Analytics and their ilk to feast on.

i mean on the negative side i've had someone i hadn't seen since 5th grade want to reconnect in person, and then we did, and he a) wanted to find out all about what happened in middle school after i left b) had some unfinished business he was clearly dealing with from elementary school, and c) was hitting on me! weirdest hangout of my life...

this was a person whose existence i had to clarify by calling my mom to ask if she recalled him and when she hazily did, i had her dig around for my old yearbook to find his photo. this shouldn't have happened, we should have forgotten each other.

i have people that i do consider really good friends that i see once a year a most, because we live far away and none of us are good at keeping in touch and everyone is busy. when we do see each other it seems as if no time has passed. we grew up together and i've known them since i was 5.

but i am very shallow compared to pomenitul

some may drink deep the cup of friendship mead while you merely shotgun the can of casual acquaintanceship

If you haven't organised an elaborate, antediluvian public rite to celebrate the passage from vous to tu (or from Sie to du, usted to tú, etc.) with a specific person, then you are morally, even metaphysically obliged to continue calling them an 'acquaintance'. Duh.

Champagne for my real friends; Facebook pain for my fake friends.

Of course I wouldn't call anyone that I treat by você/sie a friend, that would be insane. But there are, like, dozens of ppl who are not Meaningful Best Friends That I Will Share My Life With but that I don't treat by você/sie. I mean that's pretty much reserved for work relations and elders you want to show respect to.